^~pr 


EUGEN    NEUHAUS 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

AT  BERKELEY 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 


THE  JOKE 
ABOUT  HOUSING 


BY 

CHARLES   HARRIS  WHITAKER 


BOSTON 
MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 

MDCCCCXX 


COPYRIGHT-  IQ20 
BY    MARSHALL    JONES    COMPANY 


•  PLIMPTON  •   PBESS-NOKW001 


PREFACE 

IN  THE  summer  of  1917,  when  the  hous- 
ing problem  had  attained  nation-wide 
prominence  in  the  United  States,  and 
when  rumblings  of  the  oncoming  disaster, 
in  the  shape  of  an  acute  shortage  of  houses 
in  the  United  States,  were  plainly  audible, 
The  Journal  of  the  American  Institute  of 
Architects  and  the  Ladies  Home  Journal 
joined  in  holding  a  competition  for  "The 
Best  Solution  of  the  Housing  Problem." 
The  terms  of  the  competition  were  unique 
and  provided  for  the  submission  of  two 
written  theses,  one  upon  the  social  purpose 
which  any  solution  should  seek  to  accom- 
plish, and  the  other  upon  the  economic 
method  by  which  such  a  solution  could  be 
accomplished.  In  addition  to  these  require- 
ments there  was  a  third,  which  embraced  a 
simple  drawing  of  the  physical  plan  that 
should  illustrate  the  application  of  the  prin- 
ciples set  forth  in  the  two  theses. 

The  competition  was  open  to  all  citizens 
of  the  United  States  and  Canada,  and  the 
Cv] 


2016049 


PREFACE 

jury  was  as  follows:  Thomas  R.  Kimball, 
President  of  the  American  Institute  of 
Architects ,  Chairman,  Omaha;  Louis  F. 
Post,  Assistant  Secretary,  Department  of 
Labor,  Washington ;  Thomas  Adams,  Town 
Planning  Adviser,  Commission  on  Conser- 
vation, Ottawa,  Canada;  Herbert  Quick, 
Farm  Loan  Board,  Washington;  Lawson 
Purdy,  Chairman  Committee  on  New  In- 
dustrial Towns,  New  York ;  James  Sullivan, 
Representative  of  the  American  Federation 
of  Labor  on  the  Council  of  National  De- 
fense, Washington;*  Edith  Elmer  Wood, 
Writer  on  and  Student  of  Housing  Prob- 
lems, Philadelphia ;  Frederick  L.  Ackerman, 
Architect,  New  York;  Milton  B.  Medary, 
Jr.,  Architect,  Philadelphia. 

Due  to  the  arduous  task  imposed  upon 
the  jury,  which  involved  the  reading  of  all 
the  manuscripts  submitted  (about  forty) ,  the 
award  of  the  prizes  was  not  made  until  May 
1919.  The  first  prize  was  $1,000,  but  due 
to  the  fact  that  neither  of  the  two  winning 
theses  was  supplemented  by  drawings  which 
the  jury  considered  to  be  adequate,  no  first 
prize  was  awarded.  Instead,  the  jury 
awarded  two  second  prizes  of  $500  each,  one 

*  Mr.  Sullivan  did  not  participate  in  the  award,  owing 
to  absence  in  Europe. 

Cvi] 


PREFACE 

to  Robert  Anderson  Pope  and  one  to  Milo 
Hastings,  both  of  New  York  City.  But  this 
award  should  not  in  any  way  militate  against 
the  quality  of  the  winning  theses.  Each  em- 
bodied a  fundamental  plan  around  which 
qualified  experts  can  construct  a  physical 
community.  Both  of  the  winning  theses  are 
published  as  an  appendix  to  this  volume, 
which  is  itself  an  effort  to  clear  up  the  basic 
questions  involved  in  the  housing  problem 
and  to  put  an  end,  insofar  as  possible,  to  so 
much  hasty  and  loose  thinking  on  so  vital  a 
subject. 

The  author  asks  the  indulgence  of  his 
readers  in  the  use  of  certain  figures  and  sta- 
tistics previously  published  in  "The  Housing 
Problem  in  War  and  in  Peace" ;  they  seem 
too  forceful  and  pertinent  to  be  omitted. 


[vii] 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

.  I.  WHY  DO  WE  HAVE  HOUSES  ?  .     .     .     .  1 
II.  THE     HOUSE    AND     THE    HOME  —  A 

WORLD  PROBLEM 17 

III.  HOUSES  AND  WAGES 37 

IV.  THE    EMPLOYER    AND    THE    HOUSING 

QUESTION 66 

V.  THE  Two  PLANTS 84 

VI.  WHAT  ARE  THE  POSSIBLE  WAYS  OUT  OF 

THE  DILEMMA  IN  HOUSING  ?  .     .     .  96 
VII.  THE    GENERAL    PROBLEM     OF     LAND 

CONTROL 113 

VIH.  WHAT  TO  DO 155 

APPENDIX  A 169 

APPENDIX  B 174 

APPENDIX  C 178 

APPENDIX  D                           206 


[ix] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

I 

WHY  DO  WE  HAVE  HOUSES? 

IF  WE  ask  why  we  have  houses  and  an- 
swer by  saying  that  they  are  for  humans 
to  live  in,  we  seem  to  have  stated  a  very 
familiar  condition  which  required  neither 
question  nor  answer.  But  what  do  we  mean 
by  "live"  ?  That  is  the  real  question  and  one 
not  to  be  either  easily  or  lightly  answered. 
Existence  is  one  thing,  living  is  another. 
Existence  implies  an  indefinite  state  of 
merely  being  and  keeping  alive.  Living  im- 
plies growth,  and  a  house  is  therefore  some- 
thing in  which  people  not  only  live,  but  in 
which  they  should  have  a  fair  chance  to 
grow. 

How  to  grow?  Just  taller  and  larger,  as 
children  grow?  Or  do  we  mean  that  they 
are  to  grow  finer,  more  intelligent,  more 
loyal  to  principle,  more  fearless  in  the  pur- 
suit of  justice  and  fairness?  Unfortunately 
[1] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

we  have  not  meant  that  when  we  have  dis- 
cussed the  lives  of  a  great  many  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  workers  in  the  United  States. 
We  have  been  interested  quite  wholly  in 
their  houses  as  a  kind  of  machine  which 
added  to  their  physical  ability  to  perform 
labor  under  conditions  often  menial,  often 
degrading,  often  perilous,  and  too  fre- 
quently bearing  diseases  that  sometimes 
cripple,  and  sometimes  kill. 

But  what  of  the  House?  What  kind  of  a 
structure  is  it  to  be?  How  shall  it  be  built 
and  arranged  so  that  the  progress  of  life 
growth  may  proceed  without  being  choked 
and  starved  by  lack  of  air  and  sun,  by  con- 
ditions of  crowding  which  are  not  only  phys- 
ically unhealthy  but  which,  through  lack  of 
privacy,  compel  a  living  condition  amount- 
ing to  indecency  in  the  human  relation.  How 
shall  we  provide  houses  where  there  will  be 
no  insanitary  rooms,  no  dark  stairways, 
dirty  courts,  filthy  back  yards  and  even 
streets;  and  more  than  that  where  life  shall 
actually  be  encouraged  and  stimulated  to 
grow  and  be  influenced  by  the  sense  of  some- 
thing that  physical  possession  alone  cannot 
give. 

We  do  not  want  houses  to  be  handed  out 
by  any  paternalistic  agency,  in  order  that  we 


WHY  DO  WE  HAVE  HOUSES? 

may  collect  a  certain  number  of  humans  and 
arrange  them  neatly  in  these  rows  of  dwell- 
ings, in  the  full  belief  that  they  ought  to  stay 
put  and  be  content,  because  we  ourselves 
have  become  contented  with  the  appearance 
of  these  little  rows  of  houses.  They  satisfy 
our  architectural  sense.  They  do  not  disturb 
our  vision  as  unsightly  houses  do.  They 
have  pleasing  roof -lines,  quaint  gable-ends, 
charming  little  porches,  a  bit  of  garden  with 
a  walk,  and  the  chimneys  content  the  eye  as 
they  shoot  up  above  the  roof  line,  in  good 
proportion.  All  of  these  things  are  very 
pleasant,  but  whether  the  man  owns  or  rents 
these  architectural  perfections  does  not 
matter.  What  does  matter  is  whether  he  is 
living  a  life  within  one  of  those  houses  which 
stimulates  him  to  hallow  the  premises  with 
something  beyond  the  thought  of  possession 
and  ownership. 

We  wish  him  to  become  such  a  part  of 
that  house  that  his  individuality  leaves  an 
impression,  and  we  wish  that  individuality 
to  be  the  kind  that  will  leave  a  desirable  im- 
pression. It  is  folly  to  think  that  art,  even 
in  the  shape  of  a  house,  is  a  thing  to  be 
handed  out  all  finished,  like  a  mausoleum. 
A  house  is  a  thing  to  be  lived  in,  to  be  con- 
tinually and  newly  adorned,  to  be  beautified 
[3] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

by  continual  enrichments,  and  thus  to  grow 
old  with  dignity  and  to  be  a  symbol  of  some- 
thing beside  a  title-deed.  If  we  do  not  wish 
houses  to  serve  these  purposes,  when  we 
build  them,  then  we  have  lost  the  whole  spirit 
and  tradition  of  architecture,  which  did  not 
begin  by  the  process  of  having  one  group, 
calling  itself  superior,  hand  out  something 
to  another  group  which  was  called  inferior. 
Architecture  began  by  the  humble  process 
of  building  and  of  finding  beauty  through 
experience.  It  was  wholly  detached  from  a 
conscious  process  of  taking  a  man's  measure 
for  a  house  as  one  would  for  a  suit  of  clothes. 
The  house  grew,  often  by  slow  stages,  just 
as  cathedrals  grew,  and  in  that  process  of 
growing  both  left  something  which  we  are 
never  tired  of  beholding. 

The  picturesqueness  of  European  coun- 
trysides was  not  attained  by  architects 
struggling  over  drawing  boards.  It  was  at- 
tained by  people  who  possessed  the  love  and 
knowledge  of  how  to  build  with  good  pro- 
portion, with  certain  traditional  charms  of 
detail,  and,  above  all,  with  a  certain  spiri- 
tual perception  of  the  dignity  and  beauty 
that  are  possible  in  building  and  that  should 
always  be  sought,  even  in  the  humblest  struc- 
ture. Is  it  not  something  of  that  which  we 


WHY  DO  WE  HAVE  HOUSES? 

would  like  to  see  revived  as  a  part  of  our 
national  life?  While  we  waste  our  effort  in 
discussing  means  for  "educating  the  public," 
and  for  bringing  about  an  appreciation  of 
art,  let  us  remember  that  the  greatest  mis- 
sion of  art  is  to  bless  him  who  creates,  and 
not  him  who  enjoys  the  creation  afterwards. 
It  is  in  the  creation  of  art  that  men  are  made 
rich.  Men  may  possess  untold  treasures  of 
art,  and  yet  be  in  abject  creative  poverty. 

It  is  of  this  sort  of  house  that  one  would 
like  to  write,  strive  for,  and  so  bring  back  to 
our  land  something  of  the  charm  of  do- 
mestic architecture  that  once  it  had.  Per- 
haps the  time  is  coming  when  we  shall, 
through  cooperative  effort,  much  reduce  the 
labor  of  keeping  house,  and  then  it  will  be 
more  important  than  ever  that  we  surround 
the  home  with  possibilities  for  the  enrich- 
ment of  life.  It  is  time  to  think  seriously  of 
these  things,  and  to  take  notice  of  the  exist- 
ence to  which  so  large  a  part  of  our  workers 
is  condemned.  "These  things  do  not  stand 
still." 

It  is  true  that  of  late  years,  there  has  been 
a  half-hearted  perception  by  a  few  people 
that  such  an  existence,  or  such  a  life  as  was 
led  by  the  great  multitude  of  our  workers 
and  their  wives  and  families,  was  not  only 
[  5  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

a  great  financial  loss  to  the  nation,  but  a 
source  of  great  possible  evil  to  government. 
Yet  most  of  these  perceptions  were  based 
upon  definite  industrial  factors  having  to  do 
with  labor  turnover  (meaning  that  work- 
men were  continually  changing  from  one 
employer  to  another,  entailing  heavy  ex- 
pense to  the  employer  in  constantly  teaching 
new  men),  labor  shortage,  labor  unrest,  and 
a  generally  disturbed  condition  in  the  re- 
lation between  employer  and  employee. 
Vaguely,  it  became  realizable  that  there  was 
a  very  definite  relation  between  both  the 
quality  and  the  quantity  of  workmanship 
in  a  factory  and  the  living  conditions  of  the 
workman  when  he  was  at  home.  Thus,  there 
came  a  more  or  less  vague  recognition  of  the 
value  of  a  good  house  for  the  workman.  If 
it  were  owned  by  the  occupant,  so  much  the 
better,  it  was  thought,  for  then  it  was  be- 
lieved that  it  would  act  as  a  measure  of  sta- 
bilizing what  is  called  labor  which  would 
mean  an  end  of  labor  turnover.  Besides  that 
it  was  thought  that  it  would  also  have  the 
effect  of  maintaining  a  permanent  and  ade- 
quate supply  of  workers.  (This  form  of 
human  activity  thoughtlessly  has  been  al- 
lowed to  drift  into  the  class  of  commodities, 
for  when  we  now  speak  of  labor  we  do  not 
[6  ] 


WHY  DO  WE  HAVE  HOUSES? 

stop  to  think  that  we  are  talking  of  men  and 
women,  sometimes  children,  and  that  they 
all  have  bodies  and  souls,  and  human  aspira- 
tions toward  bettering  their  condition.)  But 
for  one  of  these  reasons  or  another,  many 
industries  have  undertaken  the  building  of 
houses  for  their  workmen.  No  doubt  some 
of  them  were  actuated  by  broad  considera- 
tions of  health  and  welfare,  as  far  separated 
from  any  thought  of  labor-control  (that  is, 
of  being  able  to  control  workmen  by  either 
selling  them  a  house  on  easy  payments,  or  of 
renting  them  a  house  as  part  of  their  wage) 
as  possible.  Yet  the  fact  remains  that  there 
are  few,  if  any,  really  successful  housing  un- 
dertakings of  this  kind  to  be  found  in  the 
United  States.  No  matter  how  really  sin- 
cere may  have  been  the  motive  which 
prompted  such  operations,  they  cannot  fail 
to  encounter  the  aversion  of  the  worker  from 
the  ownership  of  a  home,  except  under  very 
favorable  circumstances,  and  where  owner- 
ship does  not  require  him  to  forfeit  his  eco- 
nomic freedom  and  make  him  dependent 
upon  one  employer. 

Workmen,  organized  or  unorganized,  rec- 
ognize the  purchase  of  a  house  as  giving 
hostage  to  freedom.    Its  possession,  in  any 
city  or  town  where  they  are  dependent  upon 
[  7  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

a  limited  possibility  for  employment,  sets 
up  a  timidity  in  the  face  of  what  they  may 
believe  to  be  an  injustice  in  any  form,  and 
puts  the  workman  at  a  disadvantage  in  ne- 
gotiating, whether  singly  or  in  groups,  for 
whatever  betterment  he  may  wish  to  con- 
tend. Men  will  go  far  in  supporting  in- 
justice, or  in  tolerating  what  they  believe  to 
be  an  economic  wrong,  ere  they  will  hazard 
their  savings  which  have  been  put  into  a 
house.  This  is  the  psychology  which  governs 
industrial  housing  undertakings  carried  on 
by  manufacturers.  In  whatever  guise  they 
are  put  forward  —  no  matter  how  attractive 
the  terms  under  which  they  are  offered  — 
the  wise  workman  turns  away  his  head.  He 
has  learned  by  experience  that  freedom  of 
action  is  vastly  more  desirable  than  to  sur- 
render to  the  steadily  and  regretfully  re- 
pressed yearning  to  own  a  home.  There  may 
be  exceptions,  but  they  are  rare,  and  one 
may  well  doubt  their  permanence. 

In  his  Chapter  on  "What  is  a  House?" 
in  "The  Housing  Problem  in  War  and  in 
Peace,"  *  Mr.  Richard  S.  Childs  says:  "The 
attempt  of  manufacturers  to  sell  houses  and 

*"The  Housing  Problem  in  War  and  in  Peace,"  by 
Charles  Harris  Whitaker  and  others.  The  Journal  of  the 
American  Institute  of  Architects,  Washington,  D.  C.,  1917. 

[  8  1 


WHY  DO  WE  HAVE  HOUSES? 

lots  to  employees  on  easy  terms  or  otherwise 
is,  from  labor's  standpoint,  not  generous  but 
positively  sinister.  Except  in  towns  where 
there  is  great  diversity  of  employment,  the 
effect  is  to  tie  the  worker  to  the  millowner 
like  a  feudal  peasant  to  his  lord.  It  inter- 
feres with  the  mobility  of  labor.  As  the 
Welfare  Director  of  a  large  company  en- 
thusiastically explained  to  me,  'Get  them  to  I 
invest  their  savings  in  their  homes  and  own  j 
them.  Then  they  won't  leave  and  they  won't  / 
strike.  It  ties  them  down  so  they  have  a 
stake  in  our  prosperity.'  Another  informant 
commented  on  the  labor  troubles  that 
brought  about  the  permanent  dismantling  of 
a  certain  old  plant  in  a  New  England  vil- 
lage. 'These  fool  workers !'  he  said.  'There 
a  lot  of  them  had  invested  the  savings  of 
years  in  their  homes  and  then  had  to  sell  out 
for  a  song  and  move  elsewhere.  That's 
what  they  got  for  quarreling  with  their 
bread  and  butter!'  " 

The  alternative  to  this,  in  isolated  dis- 
tricts or  places  where  there  is  but  one  in- 
dustry to  support  the  town  or  village,  is  for 
the  manufacturer  to  build  houses  for  rental 
to  his  workmen,  but  simple  and  logical  as 
such  a  plan  seems  at  first  glance,  it  is  never 
satisfactory.  The  houses  are  likely  to  re- 

[  9  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

ceive  indifferent  care.  The  workman  sus- 
pects that  the  rental  is  a  part  of  whatever 
injustice  he  may  feel  himself  to  be  enduring. 
To  the  employer,  the  cost  of  upkeep  is  high, 
and  the  interest  on  the  investment  low. 
There  is  no  collateral  return  to  him  in  the 
form  of  stability  of  supply  of  workers.  They 
feel  themselves  as  free  to  leave  these  houses 
as  to  leave  any  other.  Such  homes  have  no 
value,  sentimental  or  real.  They  are  merely 
stepping-stones  or  resting  places  in  the 
struggle  for  human  betterment  which  is  one 
of  the  cardinal  rights  and  principles  of  de- 
mocracy. 

What  a  curious  blind  alley  we  now  find 
ourselves  inl  Those  workmen  who  would 
like  to  own  a  home  of  their  own  and  settle 
down  (most  of  them  would)  are  prevented 
from  doing  so  through  the  fear  that  it  will 
hamper  their  freedom  of  action.  The  em- 
ployer, who  has  every  reason  for  seeing  his 
workers  comfortably  and  contentedly  housed 
in  homes  of  their  own,  cannot  in  any  way  aid 
to  this  desirable  end,  because  his  motives 
are  suspected  from  the  start.  The  commu- 
nity, which  has  everything  to  gain  from  the 
steady  upbuilding  of  good  homes,  is  de- 
prived of  both  the  moral  and  the  material 
benefit  thereof.  It  is  the  same  with  the  na- 
[  10  ] 


WHY  DO  WE  HAVE  HOUSES? 

tion.  All  are  sacrificed  to  this  condition. 
All  suffer  an  immeasurable  loss. 

It  is,  of  course,  true  that  house  ownership 
imposes  a  limitation  on  the  freedom  of  action 
of  men  in  all  callings.  In  the  face  of  oppor- 
tunity a  man  hesitates  to  make  the  sacrifice 
entailed  by  the  sale  of  his  house.  Some- 
times, under  fortunate  circumstances,  it  can 
be  sold  at  a  profit.  This  is  rare,  although 
the  usual  loss  falls  less  and  less  heavily  as 
we  ascend  from  the  wage-earning  to  the 
salaried  or  income-receiving  class.  It  falls 
heaviest  of  all  on  the  low-wage  worker,  who 
is  often  referred  to  as  the  unskilled. 

Pursuing  this  thought  to  the  uttermost, 
however,  it  might  be  said  that  no  man  should 
hamper  himself  by  owning  a  house,  but  that 
the  state  should  provide  houses  for  rentals, 
so  that  all  men  could  be  free  to  move  when- 
ever they  found  a  better  position ;  and  with- 
out risk  of  loss  on  the  house  they  had  bought. 
The  real  answer,  however,  is  for  the  state  to 
put  an  end  to  the  frightful  waste  involved  in 
our  present  riotous  development  of  land,  and 
thus  make  the  house  a  stable  element  of  our 
national  life,  free  from  the  destructive  ef- 
fects of  speculation  in  land  which  forces 
speculation  in  building  and  which  always 
brings  communal  disaster  in  its  train.  If, 

C  11  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

in  the  face  of  these  facts,  we  ask,  "What  is 
a  house?"  we  are  obliged  to  answer  that  for 
the  great  majority  who  work  for  wages  or 
salaries,  it  is  a  shuttlecock  flying  back  and 
forth  between  the  battledores  of  the  manu- 
facturer, the  workman,  the  speculator,  and 
the  community. 

Yet  the  house,  as  the  framework  of  the 
home,  is  the  backbone  of  our  economic  struc- 
ture and  of  our  physical  and  moral  structure 
as  well.  Shall  we  now  recognize  this  fact? 
Or  will  our  housing  reformers  continue  their 
hopeless  struggle  with  plans  for  all  the 
various  ways  and  means  that  have  so  far 
been  invented  for  compressing  life  into 
smaller  and  smaller  quarters?  Or  offer  tem- 
porary cures  and  patent  remedies  in  the 
shape  of  standardized,  machine-made  struc- 
tures to  be  built  by  the  mile  and  sold  by  the 
yard?  Or  will  there  arise  a  new  and  more 
fundamental  philosophy  of  the  house  and  the 
home  —  a  philosophy  that  is  more  sadly 
needed  than  any  other? 

Surely  human  ingenuity  cannot  proceed 
much  further  in  distorting  the  dwelling- 
place  into  structures  possessing  less  of  the 
atmosphere  of  home  than  the  flats,  tenements 
and  four-deckers,  which,  jerrybuilt  and 
doomed  to  increase  the  fire  and  the  death 
[  12  ] 


WHY  DO  WE  HAVE  HOUSES? 

risk  more  and  more,  have  sprung  up  like 
mushrooms  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  our  land.  It  is  idle  to  tell  us  that 
this  is  the  cheapest  way  in  which  the  world 
can  be  housed.  The  process  has  had  but  one 
effect  —  as  far  as  money  has  been  concerned 

—  for  it  has  steadily  diminished  the  amount 
of  house  value  that  one  can  buy  or  rent  for 
a  dollar.    And  there  is  also  plenty  of  evi- 
dence to  make  us  believe  that  the  people  who 
live  in  these  substitute  houses,  are  growing 
not  finer,  but  coarser. 

There  are  no  definite  types  of  houses 
which  will  satisfy  all.  That  is  not  the  prob- 
lem. The  great  question  is  this:  In  what 
manner  can  we  so  house  all  our  workers,  no 
matter  whether  they  are  clerks  or  masons  or 
teamsters,  as  to  develop  men  and  women 
able  to  play  their  full  part  with  the  greatest 
advantage  to  world-progress  and  human 
betterment. 

This  is  not  a  question  of  sentimental  value 

—  it  is  an  economic  question  which  must  be 
solved,  because  the  national  economic  struc- 
tures of  the  future  will  have  to  depend  upon 
better  workers  better  housed.     To  ignore 
that  will  be  to  put  the  United  States  at  a 
colossal   disadvantage   when  the   economic 
structure  of  our  country  begins  to  deal  with 

[  13] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

the  payment  of  interest  and  the  capital 
which  has  gone  into  War. 

We  know  that  today  no  desirable  part  was 
played  in  our  wartime  necessity  by  those 
who  lived  under  the  conditions  obtaining  in 
most  of  our  tenements  and  in  the  vast  slum 
areas  created  by  the  abandonment  of  locali- 
ties that  were  once  prosperous.  Many  of 
them  were  rejected  by  the  Army,  and  were 
also  found  to  be  poor  workers  at  anything. 
We  have  found  through  War  that  victory 
was  a  question  not  alone  of  men,  but  of  in- 
dustrial organization  that  would  back  up  the 
men.  But  our  national  life  is  today  just  as 
dependent  upon  the  skill  with  which  we  can 
organize  our  industry  as  it  was  in  war,  and 
in  the  vision  war  gave  us  we  saw  that  the 
health  and  vitality  of  our  workers  were  ab- 
solute precedents  both  to  industrial  organi- 
zation and  to  the  strength  of  our  army.  We 
must  now  remember  the  lesson.  It  was  the 
Whole  Welfare  which  suddenly  became  il- 
lumined in  the  red  light  of  War!  It  must 
not  be  allowed  to  darken  in  the  light  of 
Peace. 

Germany  foresaw  these  things,  because 
she  had  treated  the  question  of  houses  as  a 
scientific  factor  in  pre-war  preparations. 
England  learned  them  by  bitter  experience, 


WHY  DO  WE  HAVE  HOUSES? 

because  she  went  to  war  as  one  of  the  worst 
housed  nations  in  the  world.  We  had  to 
learn  the  lesson  wherever  our  industries  were 
straining  at  the  giant  task  ahead  of  them. 
We  did  not  by  any  means  solve  the  problem, 
but  the  effort  has  at  least  quickened  our  in- 
telligence. The  house  has  become  one  of  the 
most  important  factors  in  our  national  life, 
for  we  have  not  enough  houses  to  shelter  our 
population ;  rents  have  risen  to  a  point  where 
they  are  hardly  payable,  and  still  we  have 
thousands  and  thousands  of  our  people 
living  in  houses  which  ought  to  be  pulled 
down  and  thrown  on  the  scrap  heap.  But 
soon,  let  us  hope,  we  shall  cease  with  the 
word  "housing,"  as  one  which  implies  the 
reluctant  recognition  of  a  necessity  to  be 
dealt  with  in  the  form  of  charity,  supplant- 
ing it  with  a  word  which  indicates  our  fear- 
less acceptance  of  the  human  right  of  all 
people  to  a  decent  shelter.  The  word 
"housing"  smells  of  handing  out  shelter  as 
we  hand  out  soup.  It  is  time  to  drop  it  and 
begin  to  talk  not  of  the  house  but  of  the 
home,  as  our  ultimate  measure  of  progress, 
reflecting  the  character  of  a  nation  made 
strong  through  reconsecration  to  the  prin- 
ciple of  democracy.  The  good  house  will 
then  be  reflected  in  the  homes  and  lives  of 
[15  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

its  people  as  the  most  desirable  physical  pos- 
session for  which  nations  can  encourage  men 
to  struggle. 

Upon  such  structures  will  rise  the  eco- 
nomic machine  of  the  future.  In  our  blind 
struggle  for  profit,  the  home  has  been  lost  to 
sight,  except  as  another  element  of  the  com- 
petitive system  —  something  to  be  governed 
not  by  the  laws  of  human  need,  but  by  those 
of  human  greed. 


II 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HOME  — 
A  WORLD  PROBLEM 

THE  question  of  "housing"  (the  word 
is  used  with  reluctance  and  only  be- 
cause none  other  seems  to  have  been 
found)  is  before  the  world  today  as  never 
before.  In  England,  where  the  problem  has 
been  growing  more  and  more  serious  for  al- 
most a  century,  the  present  housing  crisis  is 
recognized  as  momentous.  The  English 
newspapers  and  periodicals  are  devoting 
columns,  daily  and  weekly,  to  a  recital  of  the 
gravity  of  the  situation  and  to  a  discussion 
of  the  measures  of  relief  provided  by  the  new 
Housing  Act  of  Parliament.  Even  a  most 
hasty  investigation  will  indicate  the  extent 
of  the  problem  in  other  countries.  Quite 
aside  from  the  general  reconstruction  prob- 
lem in  France,  the  recent  report  of  the  Office 
des  Habitations  a  Bon  Marche  (Office  of 
Cheap  Dwellings;  Department  de  la  Seine) 
revealed  the  housing  disaster  that  has  over- 
[  17] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

taken  Paris.  The  new  Soldiers'  War  Ser- 
vice Homes  Act  of  Australia,  although 
based  on  an  extension  of  the  already  estab- 
lished governmental  principle  of  lending 
money  from  the  federal  treasury  as  an  aid 
to  home-building,  likewise  tells  the  story  of 
congestion  and  slums  in  that  far-away  and 
comparatively  new  country.  The  appropri- 
ation of  $25,000,000  by  the  Government  of 
Canada  to  be  utilized  in  stimulating  the 
building  of  houses  is  but  another  recognition 
of  the  grave  situation  that  has  everywhere 
been  produced  by  lack  of  control  in  restrict- 
ing land  and  building  speculation,  two  mi- 
crobes that  are  the  deadly,  ever  festering 
enemy  of  organized  industry  whether  on  the 
farm  or  in  the  shop,  whether  in  town  or  in 
the  country,  in  all  lands.  Relentless,  merci- 
less, protected  by  law  and  tradition,  their 
appetite  is  never  assuaged.  The  fatter  they 
grow,  the  more  devouring  they  become.  An 
unprejudiced  study  of  the  havoc  they  have 
already  wrought  forces  one  to  believe,  willy 
nilly,  that  they  have  brought  civilization  to 
a  point  where  it  is  faced  with  an  ominous 
disaster. 

It  is  perhaps  safe  to  state  that  in  the 
United  States,  the  question  of  housing  our 
unhoused   and    badly    housed   millions,    is 
[  18  ] 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HOME 

slowly  gaining  that  amount  of  attention 
which  it  has  long  been  denied.  More  than 
that,  the  problem  is  beginning  to  be  seen,  as 
never  before,  as  one  that  cannot  be  studied 
in  isolation,  for  it  is  vitally  related  to  our 
whole  economic  system.  It  is  not  a  prob- 
lem of  just  building  houses,  or  a  question  of 
what  kind  of  houses,  or  what  sizes  and  units. 
It  is  an  economic  question  profoundly  af- 
fecting our  whole  life  as  a  nation,  and  like- 
wise profoundly  affected  by  all  the  factors 
that  go  to  make  up  our  national  life. 

The  problem  has  put  on  new  garments, 
not  only  in  Old  Europe  but  in  New 
America.  Here,  the  war  forced  us  to  take 
it  from  the  cradle  as  a  puny,  sickly  infant 
called  "Housing,"  where  it  had  long  been 
coddled  and  swaddled  by  charity  and  phil- 
anthropy as  a  strange  case  of  economic  dis- 
ease which  no  one  seemed  to  understand  and 
over  the  symptoms  of  which  there  were  very 
learned  conferences  and  discussions,  filling 
hundreds  of  volumes,  by  the  housing  re- 
formers, who  passed  as  a  wise  race  of  su- 
perior men.  Then  came  the  world  war,  and 
as  if  by  magic  the  sickly  weakling  shot  up 
into  a  child  that  walked  on  its  own  feet. 
Both  England  and  the  United  States  were 
obliged  to  recognize  the  child  and  the  things 

[  19  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

that  it  said,  and  spend  several  hundred 
million  dollars  in  building  decent  homes  for 
workmen  in  order  to  get  an  adequate  pro- 
duction of  war  material. 

With  national  existence  hanging  in  the 
balance,  and  with  a  highly  organized  enemy 
at  the  throat,  the  relation  between  good 
houses  and  a  decent  environment  to  quantity 
production  was  clearly  established  and  be- 
came visible  to  the  naked  eye  of  even  the 
most  conservative  manufacturer.  During 
the  last  ten  or  twenty  years,  in  the  United 
States,  there  has  been  dawning  a  general 
perception  of  the  fact  that  such  a  relation- 
ship did  exist,  and  many  manufacturers  have 
tried  to  establish  housing  and  environ- 
mental conditions  which  would  afford  satis- 
faction to  the  workers  in  their  industries. 
But  the  war  evolved  a  glaring  illustration  of 
the  losses  that  result  from  bad  housing  and 
a  dreary  environment. 

To  build  ships  we  had  to  have  plants.  To 
build  plants  we  had  to  have  men.  To  run 
plants  we  had  to  have  men.  Yet,  quite  in 
keeping  with  our  usual  attitude  of  the  past, 
nobody  seemed  to  pay  the  slightest  attention 
to  the  fact  that  men  have  to  live,  and  that  the 
chief  mechanism  in  living  is  a  house.  We 
spent  millions  upon  millions  on  plants,  pre- 
[20  ] 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HOME 

paratory  to  the  establishment  of  a  scale  of 
production  that  would  enable  us  to  over- 
whelm our  enemy,  and  then  discovered  that 
there  were  no  houses  available  in  which  the 
workers  in  those  plants  could  live.  We  did 
not  think  of  sending  an  army  to  the  front 
without  an  equipment,  but  we  never  thought 
of  providing  a  living  equipment,  for  our 
workers,  as  a  part  of  the  plant  problem ;  we 
never  have  done  so,  but  have  left  the  prob- 
lem to  chance  and  the  speculative  builder. 

What  happened?  Our  labor  overturn  in 
the  war  industries  rose  to  an  incredible  fig- 
ure. Thousands  of  workers  roamed  from 
plant  to  plant,  seeking  a  home  for  them- 
selves, or  for  their  families  from  whom  they 
could  not  afford  to  be  separated.  The  cost 
of  all  this  in  direct  expenditure  ran  into  the 
hundreds  of  millions.  Indirectly,  through 
delays  in  making  the  needed  equipment  for 
the  army,  there  was  another  heavy  bill  of 
costs  to  pay  —  and  all  because,  as  a  nation, 
we  have  never  regarded  it  as  necessary  to 
interest  ourselves  in  the  housing  of  work- 
men and  their  families.  We  have  left  that 
problem  to  private  initiative  and  private 
capital.  Under  the  stress  of  war  both 
turned  tail  on  the  problem  and  ran  for  cover. 
They  would  not  put  their  money  into  houses 
[  21  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

when  the  prospects  of  loss  were  so  plainly  to 
be  seen.  Prices  of  building  were  high,  and 
steadily  mounting.  The  future  was  uncer- 
tain. Housing  investments  were  out  of  the 
question. 

A  wise  and  experienced  government 
would  have  foreseen  such  an  issue,  but  gov- 
ernments never  become  wise  and  experienced 
in  these  matters,  because  they  only  reflect 
the  popular  conception  and  attitude.  Thus 
in  our  War  and  Navy  Departments,  where 
contracts  for  millions  and  even  billions  of 
war  materials  were  being  given  out,  where 
new  factories  were  subsidized,  old  ones  were 
ordered  enlarged,  and  the  whole  mechanism 
of  production  was  being  stimulated  by  the 
apparently  endless  golden  stream  that 
flowed  forth  from  the  national  treasury,  no 
thought  was  given  to  the  living  conditions  of 
the  workmen  who  were,  after  all,  the  vital 
cog  in  the  whole  system.  Thus  we  began 
with  bunk-houses,  with  tents,  freight  cars, 
and  by  the  old  process  of  squeezing  several 
people  into  rooms  that  were  never  large 
enough  for  one.  Rooms  rose  to  fabulous 
prices.  House  rents  went  soaring.  Thou- 
sands of  men  even  paid  for  the  right  to  oc- 
cupy a  bed  during  eight  hours,  surrendering 
it  at  the  end  of  that  period  to  another,  who 
[22  ] 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HOME 

in  his  turn  surrendered  it  to  a  third.    Never 
did  beds  return  such  dividends. 

Result,  a  slowing  down  of  production. 
General  discovery  that  men  cannot  work  if 
they  cannot  sleep  and  have  a  decent  place  in 
which  to  pass  their  non-working  hours. 
There  were  threats  of  labor  conscription. 
The  old-line  employers  and  the  newly  made 
army  officials  saw  no  answer  to  their  prob- 
lem except  to  conscript  labor  and  make  it 
work  and  live  as  the  government  chose. 
Fortunately,  wiser  counsels  prevailed.  To 
those  who  maintained  that  if  a  soldier  could 
go  to  war  and  live  in  a  tent,  or  sleep  in  a 
shell-hole,  workmen  ought  not  to  complain 
at  bunk-houses  and  an  eight-hour  turn  in  a 
bed,  it  was  finally  made  plain  that  the  war 
problem  was  solely  a  question  of  getting  pro- 
duction. That  production  depended  upon 
men  who  had  a  night's  rest,  decent  food,  and 
a  chance  for  some  kind  of  recreation.  Also 
that  there  was  quite  a  difference  between  the 
soldier  and  the  workman,  inasmuch  as  the 
soldier  had  to  be  inured  to  war  conditions  as 
a  part  of  the  business  of  war,  while  the 
workman  had  quite  a  different  trade  to 
follow.  Also,  that  soldiers  left  their  wives 
and  families  at  home  and  did  not  have 
to  share  their  tents  and  shell-holes  with 
[  23  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

them,  while  workmen  had  to  stay  with  their 
wives  and  families,  who,  in  their  turn,  had 
to  share  the  lot  of  the  family  provider. 

Then,  again,  the  war  had  the  effect  of  pro- 
viding a  standard  of  measurement  such  as 
we  had  not  hitherto  possessed.  It  has  always 
been  known,  although  very  often  not  ad- 
mitted by  the  employing  class,  that  bad 
housing  conditions  impose  a  loss  on  the  pro- 
duction process.  But  this  loss  was  men- 
tioned as  a  vague  and  indeterminate  factor, 
and  it  was  generally  taken  for  granted  that 
the  supply  of  human  beings  would  somehow 
or  other  be  maintained  and  that  there  would 
be  no  difficulty  in  replacing  those  who  per- 
ished in  such  large  numbers  under  the  silent 
assault  of  tuberculosis  and  the  industrial  dis- 
eases engendered  by  bad  plant  and  living 
conditions.  Besides,  this  loss  could  easily  be 
charged  to  the  cost  of  production  and  thus 
be  paid  by  the  consumer.  But  in  war  there 
came  a  sort  of  national  perception  of  what 
the  cost  might  be.  The  fate  of  the  nation  was 
at  stake.  It  was  no  longer  a  question  of 
dollars  and  cents.  It  was  a  question  of  the 
lives  and  property  of  all,  and  of  course  under 
such  a  threat,  we  were  willing  to  admit  the 
necessity  of  building  workmen's  houses,  as 
a  national  duty. 

[  24  ] 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HOME 

Unfortunately,  the  task  of  meeting  this 
necessity  fell  at  first  into  the  most  incompe- 
tent hands,  and  the  history  of  our  war-time 
house  building  under  governmental  ad- 
ministration, does  not  encourage  us  to  be- 
lieve that  any  solution  of  the  problem  will 
be  found  in  that  direction.  On  the  other 
hand,  for  the  reasons  which  lie  at  the  base  of 
the  question,  it  will  be  shown  later  that  the 
Government  is  utterly  powerless  in  this 
matter,  for  it  is  faced  with  an  enemy  which 
it  cannot  yet  bring  to  bay  and  conquer.  The 
people  of  the  United  States  are  not  yet 
ready  for  such  a  battle,  although  it  cannot 
be  avoided,  when  they  understand  the  nature 
of  that  enemy. 

The  war  housing  experience  of  England 
was  enlightening,  and  it  is  beyond  dispute 
that  the  millions  spent  by  our  ally  in  build- 
ing thousands  and  thousands  of  decent 
houses  for  the  workers  in  her  war  industries, 
saved  thousands  and  thousands  of  lives. 
Houses,  in  England,  helped  to  shorten  the 
war,  by  contributing  to  an  ever  increasing 
quantity  production  of  munitions.  Indeed, 
it  might  be  safe  to  say  that  if  England  had 
not  recognized  the  dire  consequences  of  try- 
ing to  manufacture  munitions  under  the  old 
conditions  of  slums  and  congestion,  light- 
[  25  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

less  and  airless  rooms,  and  the  deadly  mo- 
notony of  ugly  streets  and  repellant  bare 
walls,  the  Allies  would  have  had  a  much 
harder  task  on  their  hands.  England's  final 
tremendous  munitions  production  was 
largely  due  to  the  fact  that  she  made  her 
workers  produce  more  than  ever  before 
simply  by  giving  them  a  larger  measure  of 
rest,  comfort,  sanitation  and  pleasurable  en- 
vironment, than  she  had  ever  given  them 
before. 

Let  us  not  forget  the  part  that  England's 
housing  operations  played  in  shortening  the 
duration  of  the  war,  with  the  resulting 
saving  of  life  and  materials.  Let  us  also  re- 
member to  look  with  regret  upon  the  long 
delays,  due  to  ignorance  and  incompetence, 
in  getting  our  own  housing  program  under 
way.  Except  for  the  work  done  by  the  Ord- 
nance Department,  all  our  millions  spent  on 
housing,  during  the  war,  contributed  almost 
nothing  to  an  increase  in  munitions  produc- 
tion, and  no  great  amount  to  our  knowledge 
of  how  really  to  meet  and  solve  the  problem. 

Today  the  attention  of  a  large  part  of  the 
world  is  directed  to  the  housing  problem. 
The  puny  child  has  grown  to  a  youth,  strong 
if  not  robust.  It  has  won  its  way  into  the 
parliaments  of  men.  The  King  discoursed 
[  26  ] 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HOME 

of  housing  in  his  speech  from  the  throne  of 
England.  The  Congress  of  the  United 
States  has  discussed  it,  and  will  discuss  it 
again.  State  Legislatures  are  opening  their 
doors  to  let  it  enter  as  a  matter  of  course. 
Europe,  not  alone  in  her  devastated  areas, 
must  rehouse  millions  of  her  population. 
The  youth  is  rapidly  becoming  a  man.  The 
housing  question  will  not  down,  nor  will  it 
be  content  with  the  palliatives  of  the  past. 

As  a  problem  it  is  as  old  as  the  hills.  Most 
of  the  great  nations  have  been  on  a  quest  for 
a  solution.  Every  kind  of  plan  has  been 
tried,  except  the  one  that  will  really  pro- 
vide a  cure  (although  the  latter  has  been 
tried,  on  a  small  scale,  in  several  countries, 
as  will  later  be  shown)  and  so  large  a  store 
of  world  experience  is  now  available,  and  so 
conclusive  a  deduction  is  now  forced  upon 
the  attention  of  any  sincere  investigator,  that 
it  seems  both  incredible  and  pathetic  to  find 
England  still  refusing  to  grapple  with  the 
roots  of  the  cancer  with  which  she  has  so 
long  contended.  Equally  pathetic  does  it 
seem  to  hear  well-meaning  citizens  in  the 
United  States  advocate  principles,  the  fu- 
tility of  which  is  glaringly  evident,  if  one 
will  but  take  the  trouble  to  look.  Many  of 
the  eleventh  hour  suggestions,  now  that  the 
[  27  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

crisis  has  become  acute,  are  based  upon  State 
or  Municipal  loans  for  building  houses,  at 
low  rates  of  interest.  It  seems  to  be  thought 
that  plenty  of  money  will  provide  a  quick 
and  easy  cure,  yet  nation  after  nation  has 
tried  such  a  plan,  with  very  low  rates  of  in- 
terest, only  to  discover  that  it  was  just  a 
form  of  temporary  relief  and  no  cure  at 
all,  since  a  silent,  yet  all-devouring  monster, 
ate  up  every  benefit  conferred.  Germany, 
one  of  the  first  of  the  nations  to  discover  and 
to  expose  this  monster,  sought  to  check  his 
destructive  appetite  by  having  her  towns 
and  cities  acquire  the  vacant  land  in  their 
areas,  so  that  as  the  value  of  the  land  rose, 
the  profit  would  revert  to  the  community 
and  not  to  the  individual,  for  the  name  of 
the  monster  is  Land  Speculation.  Far-away 
Australia  and  New  Zealand  tried  the  same 
plan,  nationally,  by  buying  up  thousands  of 
acres  of  land  and  holding  it  for  the  future. 
England,  through  the  efforts  of  private 
capital,  started  Garden  Cities,  some  of  which 
were  owned  on  the  cooperative  principle, 
thus  preserving  the  profit  on  the  rise  in 
value  of  such  land,  or  land  increments,  as 
these  profits  are  called,  to  the  stockholders, 
who  were  the  tenants.  Everywhere  one 
turns,  one  is  met  with  the  fact  that  all  na- 
[28  ] 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HOME 

tions  have  finally  been  forced  to  seek  some 
kind  of  scheme  for  defeating  the  destruction 
wrought  upon  housing  by  the  private  ap- 
propriation of  land  increments. 

Land  speculation  is  not  confined  to  any 
class.  The  greedy  rich  are  no  more  to  be 
condemned  than  the  greedy  poor.  Every- 
body who  buys  land  wants  it  to  increase  in 
value,  so  that  he  can  get  rich  out  of  the  un- 
earned increments,  for  of  course  they  are 
unearned,  as  the  owner  of  the  land  does 
nothing  but  sit  and  wait  for  the  land  to  grow 
more  valuable.  Thus  the  germ  of  acquiring 
benefits  from  land  increments  lies  deep  in 
our  national  life.  The  germ  of  land  owner- 
ship lies  equally  deep.  There  is  nothing  to 
prove  that  those  who  do  not  own  land  would 
be  any  less  selfish,  were  positions  to  be 
changed.  Landlordism  does  not  differ  ma- 
terially with  the  landlord,  since  it  is  bound 
to  play  the  game  according  to  the  rules,  or 
else  lose.  On  the  other  hand,  the  steady 
growth  of  landlordism  and  the  steady  dimi- 
nution of  home  ownership  in  the  United 
States  are  problems  now  seen  to  be  big  with 
significance.  They  indicate,  unfortunately, 
that  a  democratic  form  of  government  will 
not  avert  such  evils  in  housing,  such  con- 
gestion and  slums,  as  we  find  in  Europe. 
[  29  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

Our  own  conditions  are  equally  bad.  We, 
like  England,  can  no  longer  build  decent 
houses  at  a  low  rental,  and  have  them  return 
an  interest  that  would  be  considered  as  fair, 
on  the  investment.  Having  borrowed  our 
land  and  economic  system  from  Europe,  we 
have  also  allowed  it  to  bring  us  to  the  same 
pass. 

In  the  great  and  wonderful  epic  of 
America,  how  we  used  to  be  thrilled,  as 
children,  with  the  story  of  the  first  coming 
of  the  pioneer.  As  he  first  came  across  the 
ocean  in  small  ships  such  as  we  would  not 
now  think  of  going  to  sea  in,  we  thought  of 
him  as  a  daring  hero.  Then  as  he  took  his 
way  westward  into  the  depths  of  the  wilder- 
ness, how  we  journeyed  with  him,  breathless, 
in  the  great  adventure  I  Is  there  not  then  a 
profound  significance  —  a  deep  reproach  — 
in  the  fact  that  where  we  once  tingled  with 
joy  over  the  picture  of  the  cabin  in  the  forest, 
of  the  rude  "home,"  the  family  "fireside," 
the  welcoming  "hearth-fire,"  the  sheltering 
"roof-tree,"  we  are  now  content  to  dismiss 
the  picture  from  our  minds  and  talk  heart- 
lessly about  "housing." 

We  even  include  the  poor  man's  home  in 
our  philanthropies  and  thus  are  quite  willing 
to  pass  over  to  the  hands  of  charity  the  thing 
[  30  ] 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HOME 

which  we  once  glorified  as  the  very  essence 
of  our  American  spirit  and  courage  —  the 
quest  of  a  home!  Bearing  these  things  in 
mind,  let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  the  Thir- 
teenth Census  (1910),  and  particularly  at 
the  chapter  entitled  "Ownership  of  Homes,'* 
for  here  we  shall  find  some  plain  facts  which 
show  very  clearly  that  we  have  fallen  far 
away  from  the  principles  of  home-making 
and  home-owning  that  once  helped  to  make 
up  our  national  ideal.  For  a  whole  century 
at  least  the  United  States  was  the  goal  of  the 
landless  and  the  houseless  of  all  nations. 
Men  came  here  to  found  the  home  which 
they  could  not  found  in  their  own  coun- 
try, because  the  land  was  there  all  held 
by  a  minority  class  of  rich  owners  who 
would  not  sell  it,  and  who  thus  forced 
the  majority  of  the  people  to  remain 
forever  landless  and  a  tenant  class  practi- 
cally at  the  mercy  of  a  few  landlords.  Some 
months  before  his  death,  Mr.  Roosevelt  ut- 
tered a  warning  about  the  change  that  had 
crept  over  us,  and  he  pointed  out  the  fact 
that  there  was  a  steady  decline  in  the  number 
of  owned  farms  and  a  consequent  steady  in- 
crease in  tenant  farmers.  No  one  who  has 
studied  this  question  in  the  last  decade  has 
ignored  its  deep  significance,  but  the  same 
[  31  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 


pjjaqrano 


sss 


88      §S      8 


O<M         con 


«         o 


2 


S2 


SEi       3 


Ill 


-mnang 


. 
82      SS 


s 


pajaq 
mnang 


soil       -o*. 

ig  §§ 


paaaqoina 
-napanMQ 


«»«S 

S§ 


=5      5 


S2      SS 


SS      22      g 


gg 


PHI    N 

"I  HIM 

Nil   §:i 

^^  ^^-<      >if^ 
[  32  ] 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HOME 

fact  is  equally  patent  when  we  study  the 
house.  Here,  ownership  by  the  occupant 
has  declined  in  a  far  greater  proportion 
than  has  farm  ownership.  The  Census  of 
1910  tells  the  story  in  the  accompanying 
table. 

The  figures  for  Alaska  and  Hawaii  are  of 
the  greatest  interest,  because  they  show  how 
swiftly  the  same  process  of  changing  land 
ownership  to  land  tenantship  takes  place 
even  in  newly  opened  lands.  The  difference 
in  the  ten-year  periods  is  marked  by  great 
descents.  As  to  the  causes  which  have 
brought  about  this  result,  which  is  so  op- 
posed to  our  ideals  of  freedom  and  liberty, 
there  can  be  but  one  general  answer.  Under 
our  economic  system  of  permitting  unre- 
stricted speculation  in  land,  we  have  denied 
the  political  and  social  ideal  upon  which  the 
nation  was  founded.  We  have  turned  our 
backs  on  democracy  by  beguiling  ourselves 
with  crude  attempts  to  solve  it  in  political 
terms,  the  while  we  gave  ourselves  unbridled 
license  to  exploit  our  land  and  all  that  it  con- 
tained with  no  thought  of  what  might  be 
the  ultimate  effect  upon  ourselves  as  a  na- 
tion and  upon  the  democracy  we  professed 
to  seek.  The  result  we  shall  have  to  reckon 
with.  Landlordism  has  steadily  increased 
[  33  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

until  we  are  in  a  fair  way  to  actually  repeat 
the  very  cycle  from  which  men  of  other  na- 
tions wished  to  escape  by  coming  hither.  It 
was  an  inevitable  outcome  of  the  individu- 
alism which  has  passed  current  for  freedom, 
and  constitutes  a  national  acceptance  of  the 
doctrine  that  the  whole  welfare  of  the  nation 
must  give  way  to  the  right  of  the  individual 
to  pursue  his  path  as  he  pleases.  We  have 
struggled  to  curb  this  individualistic  willful- 
ness by  many  forms  of  legislation  such  as, 
for  example,  the  Sherman  Law  forbidding 
trusts,  but  it  all  appears  to  have  but  little  or 
no  effect. 

If  we  ask  whether  it  is  best,  in  any  coun- 
try, that  the  land  and  the  buildings  should 
be  owned  by  a  minority  which  inevitably 
grows  smaller  and  smaller  and  thus  richer 
and  richer,  we  may  safely  answer  that  such 
a  condition  has  never  yet  built  up  a  healthy 
nation.  Wherever  it  has  been  tried,  there 
have  been  revolutions.  If,  however,  we  as- 
sume, as  so  many  do,  that  the  increasing 
wealth  of  the  few  is  a  result  that  cannot  be 
prevented  in  the  competitive  struggle  be- 
tween men  whose  abilities  are  so  unequal  in 
carrying  on  business,  industry  and  com- 
merce, then  we  must  admit  that  life  consists 
merely  of  an  endless  and  hopeless  repetition 
[  34  ] 


THE  HOUSE  AND  THE  HOME 

of  cycles,  each  with  its  debacle  and  rebirth. 
But  does  the  faith  that  these  cannot  and 
ought  not  to  be  prevented  still  claim  so  large 
a  body  of  adherents,  now  that  we  have 
passed  through  the  throes  of  the  most  violent 
convulsion  the  world  has  known  —  when  we 
can  see  more  clearly  than  ever  before 
through  eyes  to  which  science  has  lent  a  new 
visionary  power,  when  the  problems  of 
Peace  are  seen  to  be  grave  and  serious  in- 
deed? 

It  is  upon  our  answer  to  this  question  that 
the  problem  of  building  houses  for  those  who 
work  depends  for  the  right  solution,  and  it 
is  this  which  also  gives  such  emphasis  to  the 
importance  of  dealing  rightly  with  the  pres- 
ent dire  emergency  of  shortage  in  houses, 
high  rents,  and  the  consequent  congestion 
to  which  so  many  thousands  of  our  workers, 
with  their  wives  and  families,  are  con- 
demned. War  made  this  so  vital  a  question 
that  we  had  to  face  it  whether  we  would  or 
no,  but  Peace  also  demands  that  we  face  it, 
and  quickly  too.  And  yet  we  cannot  in  any 
way  find  the  right  solution  without  asking 
ourselves  the  following  questions;  they 
weave  themselves  into  the  figures  in  the 
Census  with  an  insistence  which  not  only  im- 
plores but  commands  us  to  find  the  answer. 
[  35  ] 


THE   JOKE   ABOUT   HOUSING 

Can  it  be  true  that  the  great  body  of  our 
citizens  no  longer  care  about  possessing  a 
house?  Has  living  in  rented  substitutes,  in 
a  steadily  increasing  degree  over  a  long 
period  of  years,  made  them  willing  to  give 
up  the  idea  of  owning  a  home?  Do  we  ad- 
mit that  the  "efficiency"  of  our  life  is  so  im- 
portant that  the  great  majority  must  consent 
to  a  landlordism  which  cannot  be  escaped? 
Must  we  as  other  nations  have  done,  pursue 
to  the  bitter  and  disastrous  end  a  system 
which  says  that  the  workman  must  give  up 
his  wish  to  own  a  home  in  order  that  he  may 
save  for  himself  the  largest  possible  measure 
of  economic  freedom,  by  always  being  free 
to  move  without  danger  of  losing  his  sav- 
ings? The  facts  offer  sad  evidence  of  the 
condition  to  which  we  have  arrived,  and  the 
right  solution  of  what  we  have  pathetically 
termed  the  "industrial  housing"  problem 
depends  utterly  upon  our  resolve  to  study 
the  problem  with  open  minds  and  with  all 
the  facts  squarely  before  us. 


Ill 

HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

ONE  element  of  the  house  question 
which  so  far  has  received  too  little  at- 
tention is  wages.  We  believe  it  will 
not  be  disputed  that  as  wages  rise,  rents  rise 
also.  Why  should  this  be  so?  First,  because 
of  the  natural  cupidity  of  landlords,  who 
find  it  possible  to  demand  more  rent  as  soon 
as  they  know  that  there  has  been  a  raise  in 
wages.  Second,  because  of  the  inevitable 
pyramiding  process  forced  by  our  economic 
system.  Under  this  process,  and  by  a  slow 
but  inflexible  progress,  the  cost  of  living 
eventually  overtakes  each  wage  advance  won 
by  the  worker.  Sometimes  it  happens 
quickly,  sometimes  slowly.  Then  there 
comes,  and  of  very  necessity,  a  fresh  demand 
for  higher  wages.  The  process  has  gone  on, 
almost  without  recognition,  until  it  has 
reached  a  point,  under  the  unusual  impact  of 
war,  where  the  problem  of  making  both  ends 
meet  is  almost  beyond  solution  for  a  great 
number  of  our  population. 
[  37  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

In  between  the  organized  skilled  workers, 
who  may  secure  temporary  wage  advances, 
and  the  employers,  who  may  add  the  cost  of 
the  wage  advances  to  the  cost  of  their 
products,  rests  a  great  body  of  unorganized 
workers,  both  manual  and  clerical,  and  even 
professional.  Their  problem  under  present- 
day  conditions  has  become  grave  indeed. 
They  are  caught,  as  it  were,  between  the 
upper  and  nether  millstones,  and  are  without 
means  of  bettering  their  condition  through 
any  organized  action. 

In  this  connection  it  must  be  recognized 
that  no  industry  can  save  itself  by  itself. 
Hitherto  we  have  had  a  certain  percentage 
of  workmen  organized  to  a  point  where  they 
could  succeed  in  bettering  their  condition  to 
a  degree.  But  the  cost  of  this  betterment 
has  been  charged  back  on  the  cost  of  pro- 
duction and  thus  has  had  to  be  borne  by  the 
general  consuming  public.  Under  the  stress 
of  war,  and  the  consequent  increased  cost  of 
living,  wages  generally  have  risen  until  they 
have  brought  us  to  a  condition  where  we 
have  begun  to  see  the  impossibility  of  mak- 
ing wages  overtake  the  increased  cost  of  the 
necessities  of  life.  This  has  created  a  fur- 
ther perception  on  the  part  of  unorganized 
workers,  of  the  necessity  of  more  unions. 
[  38  ] 


HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

The  brain-workers  see  that  they  must  pur- 
sue the  trade-union  method  as  a  means  of 
protecting  themselves.  New  organizations 
are  springing  to  life  with  astonishing  rapid- 
ity. But  under  this  concentrated  impact  the 
whole  industrial  fabric  begins  to  creak  and 
groan  in  an  ominous  manner.  We  find  our- 
selves caught  in  a  vortex  of  economic  pres- 
sure which  our  industrial  system  cannot  bear, 
and  yet  the  foolish  resort  to  pyramiding  is 
the  only  answer  that  we  seem  able  to  make. 
This  process  of  pyramiding,  so  long  as  it 
was  based  on  a  comparatively  equal  distri- 
bution of  rising  wages  and  rising  costs, 
might  go  on  endlessly,  perhaps,  within  the 
confines  of  one  nation.  That  is  to  say,  as 
long  as  the  same  ratio  of  wage  to  cost  of 
living  was  maintained,  it  might  be  said  that 
it  made  no  difference  as  to  what  the  money 
payment  happened  to  be.  As  long  as  wages 
would  buy  the  same  amount  of  living  neces- 
sities, comforts,  conveniences  and  pleasures, 
it  would  make  no  difference  to  anybody  what 
actual  amount  of  money  was  received  in 
wages.  (Of  course,  the  process  possesses  a 
great  inherent  danger,  in  that  it  provides  no 
basis  for  paying  workers  a  higher  real  wage, 
it  permits  the  more  rapid  accumulation  of 
large  sums  of  money  by  an  individual  or  by 
[  39  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

a  group  of  individuals,  as  is  already  the  case 
in  the  United  States,  and  it  ought  not,  under 
any  circumstances,  to  be  accepted  as  a  de- 
sirable basis  for  building  an  economic  sys- 
tem.) But  when  one  nation  comes  into  com- 
petition with  another,  the  wage  cost  of  pro- 
duction is  a  vital  factor  as  affecting  the  com- 
petitive prices  of  commodities  which  one  na- 
tion desires  to  sell  in  world  markets  as 
against  another  nation. 

One  way  of  attempting  to  preserve  the 
high  wage  basis  in  a  given  country,  has  been 
to  lay  a  protective  tariff  against  imports 
coming  from  countries  having  a  lower  wage 
basis.  One  of  the  prime  claims  made  by  the 
advocates  of  this  form  of  tax  has  been  that 
its  adoption  by  a  country  would  maintain 
the  high  wages  of  the  workmen  in  that 
country.  But  as  it  is  notorious  that  manu- 
facturers under  a  protective  tariff  in  the 
United  States  have  been  able  to  sell  their 
wares  in  other  countries  at  a  less  price  than 
in  their  own,  and  at  a  profit  as  well,  it  would 
seem  to  be  clear  that  the  prices  charged  for 
goods  sold  in  the  home  market  must  have 
been  unduly  high  and  profits  exorbitant.  If 
goods  can  be  shipped  to  Europe  and  sold  at 
a  profit  at  a  lower  price  than  in  the  United 
States,  why  can  they  not  be  sold  for  the 
[  40  ] 


HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

lower  price  at  home?  But  even  putting  that 
question  aside,  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  the 
protective  tariff  does  not  solve  the  problem 
of  pyramiding.  Under  a  protective  tariff 
wages  do  not  remain  stationary,  nor  do  they 
rise  as  fast  as  the  cost  of  living.*  While  the 
compilations  of  our  Governmental  agencies 
show  this  very  clearly,  the  fact  has  been 
driven  home  as  never  before,  since  the  con- 
clusion of  the  war.  The  menace  of  land- 
lordism has  now  reached  such  an  acute  stage 
as  to  attract  universal  attention,  and  as  it  is 
no  longer  possible  to  invest  money  in  decent 
homes  at  a  low  rental,  because  wage  earners 
cannot  afford  to  pay  the  rent  required  to 
make  a  profit  to  the  investor,  all  kinds  of 
plans  are  being  proposed  in  order  to  attract 
capital  to  house  building.  England,  recog- 
nizing a  condition  which  we  are  slow  to  see, 
has  granted  a  subsidy  out  of  the  national 
treasury  for  the  building  of  such  homes. 
But  let  us  not  forget  that  this  is  no  cure  for 
the  housing  problem  —  it  is  merely  the  de- 
spairing act  of  paternalism  forced  by  an  un- 
willingness to  grapple  with  the  disease  itself. 
Mr.  Frank  A.  Vanderlip,  one  of  the  re- 
puted financial  authorities  of  the  United 
States,  after  three  months'  study  of  the 

*  See  Appendix  A. 
[  41  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

after-war  problems  of  Europe,  said,  in  a 
speech  delivered  in  New  York  City  on  May 
26,  1919,  a  few  days  after  his  return  from 
England:  *  "England  has  held  the  premier 
position  in  the  international  industrial  mar- 
kets. America  grew,  but  England  grew  too. 
America  grew  faster.  So  did  Germany  grow 
faster.  But  England  had,  up  to  the  out- 
break of  the  war,  held  the  premier  position. 
Now  how  did  she  hold  it?  She  had  little  raw 
material,  some  iron  and  some  coal.  That 
was  all.  I  will  tell  you  how  she  held  it.  She 
held  it  by  underpaying  labor.  That  was  her 
differential.  She  underpaid  labor  until  to- 
day labor  has  not  a  house  over  its  head  in 
England,  and  that  Government  is  undertak- 
ing to  build  one  million  houses  for  working 
men." 

Unfortunately,  Mr.  Vanderlip's  state- 
ment as  to  the  housing  conditions  in  Eng- 
land cannot  be  dismissed  with  any  such 
simple  analysis  as  that,  and  as  an  economic 
illustration  it  needs  further  examination. 
England's  workers  have  been  underpaid.  So 
have  all  workers.  No  country  has  paid  labor 
fairly,  and  no  country  can  pay  labor  fairly. 
It  is  not  possible,  under  our  economic  sys- 
tem. The  workers  of  England  are  today 

*  From  a  press   report. 
[  42  ] 


HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

preparing  to  obtain  a  different  result,  and 
the  Government  of  that  country  is  wise 
enough  to  recognize  the  fact  that  if  it  does 
not  subsidize  the  building  of  houses  for 
workers,  either  they  will  not  be  built,  in 
which  case  the  result  would  be  a  revolution, 
or  else  the  housing  demand  will  be  met  by 
the  erection  of  the  cheapest  kind  of  build- 
ings, no  better  than  slums  when  new,  and 
England  now  knows  that  not  only  must  the 
old  slums  go,  but  that  she  must  prevent  any 
more  from  coming  into  existence.  Her 
national  safety  demands  it,  and  the  life  of 
her  industry  is  dependent  upon  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  slums  and  the  provision  of 
healthy  homes  and  a  satisfying  community 
existence  as  a  definite  and  permanent  trans- 
lation of  that  "better  world  to  live  in"  for 
which  her  workers  were  asked  to  make  their 
heroic  sacrifice. 

Lord  D'Abernon,  upon  his  investigation 
of  the  drink  problem  in  England,  reached  the 
conclusion  that  men  and  women  get  drunk 
in  England  for  the  most  part  in  order  to 
escape  the  horrors  and  the  misery  of  their 
environment ;  this  conclusion  will  not  be  lost 
to  sight,  even  though  the  land-owning  class 
in  England  will  struggle  bitterly  in  oppos- 
ing the  true  remedy,  by  which  alone 
[  43] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

England  can  change  her  environmental  con- 
ditions. 

But  the  environmental  horror  and  its  en- 
suing depression  upon  the  individual, 
against  which  the  struggle  is  increasing  until 
a  large  part  of  the  world  is  inquiring  as  to 
what  is  to  be  done,  are  the  result  of  our 
pyramiding  process  as  applied  to  wages  and 
the  cost  of  living.  They  indicate  beyond  dis- 
pute that  the  process  has  slowly  spun  itself 
out,  until,  under  the  added  burdens  of  the 
cost  of  the  war,  the  pyramid  is  beginning  to 
show  signs  of  weakness  at  the  base.  These 
weaknesses  will  increase  as  there  comes  the 
inevitable  necessity  for  nations  to  make 
profits  out  of  international  trade.  Their 
debts  owed  to  their  own  peoples  may  (to  a 
greater  or  lesser  degree)  be  extinguished  by 
internal  taxation  but  their  external  obliga- 
tions must  be  paid  out  of  the  profits  of  inter- 
national trade.  There  must  be  an  exchange 
of  products  between  nations.  There  will  be 
a  pronounced  competition  in  the  markets  of 
the  world,  keener  than  ever  before.  The 
pyramid  raised  out  of  successive  wage  in- 
creases and  successive  higher  living  costs 
will  operate  as  a  great  handicap  to  those 
nations  which  are  on  a  higher  wage  basis 
than  others.  A  greater  per  capita  produc- 
[  44  ] 


HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

tion  might  tend  in  some  degrees  to  offset 
this  handicap  providing  that  greater  pro- 
duction can  be  obtained,  and  the  profits 
therefrom  turned  over  to  the  producers  in- 
stead of  to  the  non-producers  as  under  our 
present  system.  But  the  whole  process 
ought  to  be  examined  impartially  as  a  basic 
principle  of  our  whole  economic  system,  and 
above  all  things,  let  us  remember  that  our 
pyramid  stands  not  on  its  base,  but  upon 
its  apex.  The  larger  it  grows,  the  more 
props  it  needs  to  keep  it  from  falling  over 
and  crushing  us ;  it  is  only  a  question  of  time 
when  no  props  will  be  strong  enough  to  pre- 
vent the  fall,  for  we  are  only  trying  to  defy 
a  physical  principle  that  cannot  be  defied. 

The  truth  is,  also,  that  the  pyramiding 
process  simply  does  not  work  on  anything 
like  an  equal  basis,  and  the  reason  for  that, 
at  least  in  respect  to  housing,  lies  clearly  in 
the  fact  that  the  increase  in  the  costs  of 
building  sites  outstrips  the  ability  of  the 
worker  to  secure  a  wage  increase  that  will 
enable  him  to  meet  the  higher  rent  demanded 
on  account  of  the  ever  higher  price  of  land. 
He  simply  cannot  keep  pace  with  the  rising 
price.  As  a  result,  as  we  have  said,  it  is  a 
generally  recognized  fact  that  it  is  no  longer 
possible  in  the  United  States  to  build  decent 
[  45  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

houses  within  the  rent-paying  ability  of  low- 
wage  workers.  The  same  condition  exists 
in  England,  where  the  national  treasury 
must  now  contribute  a  subsidy  to  the  build- 
ing of  small  houses.  There  are  those  who 
contend  that  this  is  due  to  the  war,  but  the 
facts  will  discover  to  whoever  cares  to  in- 
vestigate, that  the  same  condition  actually 
existed  for  many  years  prior  to  the  war,  in 
Europe,  and  for  some  years  prior  to  the  war, 
in  this  country. 

As  rentals  are  a  very  large  item  in  the 
budget  of  the  workman,  whether  he  be  a 
wage-earner  or  a  clerk,  so  do  they  also  con- 
stitute the  largest  single  factor  in  the  pyra- 
miding process  involved  in  the  effort  to 
make  the  rise  in  wages  gain  over  the  rise  in 
the  cost  of  living.  Thus  they  contribute  more 
than  any  other  single  factor  to  the  instability 
of  labor,  to  discontent,  and  to  the  continual 
strife  between  organized  labor  and  organized 
capital.  If  the  housing  question  could  be 
seen  and  recognized  and  understood  as  a 
question  of  wage-stabilization,  both  em- 
ployers and  employees  could  then  begin  to 
grapple  with  it  intelligently.  But  the  fact 
is  that  housing  reformers  and  philanthro- 
pists have  persisted  in  keeping  the  housing 
question  in  an  isolation  hospital,  where  it 
[  46  ] 


HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

was  considered  as  a  peculiar  problem  to  be 
solved  by  building  cheaply,  skillful  planning 
and  continually  discovering  how  to  put  more 
people  in  the  same  space.  Thus  the  disease 
was  never  diagnosed  in  relation  to  wages, 
rentals,  taxations,  cost  of  land,  and  cost  of 
living,  and  the  whole  mechanism  of  industry. 
Seen  in  this  true  relationship  as  a  sick 
member  of  our  whole  system,  it  will  be  at 
last  understood.  Looked  at  under  a  micro- 
scope as  an  interesting,  diverting  and  some- 
times a  troublesome  social  phenomenon, 
having  nothing  to  do  with  anything  except 
houses,  it  has  no  chance  whatever  of  being 
understood,  diagnosed,  or  cured. 

Architects  have  wrestled  with  the  problem 
in  vain,  failing  to  realize  that  all  of  their 
skill  in  planning  and  designing  was  neu- 
tralized by  economic  factors  over  which  they 
had  not  the  slightest  control.  Each  time 
they  seemed  to  have  squeezed  the  last  drop 
of  room  out  of  a  given  piece  of  land,  it  at 
once  became  necessary  to  squeeze  out  more. 
All  of  their  effort  in  contriving  economies 
and  in  the  more  efficient  use  of  space,  have, 
in  the  final  analysis,  contributed  nothing  to 
the  problem  of  how  to  provide  decent  and 
comfortable  homes  for  people  of  small  wages 
or  salaries.  In  the  larger  cities,  the  answer 
[  47] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

has  been  the  tenement;  the  agglomerate 
hives  where  human  beings  have  succumbed 
to  smaller  and  smaller  rooms,  less  and  less 
light  and  air,  and  a  generally  uninspiring 
and  depressing  environment.  In  the  smaller 
towns  and  villages,  the  answer  has  been 
shacks  and  hovels.  Why?  Not  because 
there  is  not  enough  room  in  the  world  for 
decent  living  conditions,  but  because  sites 
for  house  building  purposes  increase  in  price 
faster  than  workers  can  increase  their  wages. 
This  rising  cost  of  sites  brings  a  correspond- 
ing rise  in  the  cost  of  the  building.  In  order 
to  insure  a  return  upon  the  investment,  more 
tenants  must  be  crowded  onto  the  same  piece 
of  land.  The  process  continues  unchecked, 
until  the  point  is  reached  where  the  continu- 
ally rising  land  costs  compel  not  only  that 
the  house  shall  be  reduced  to  the  lowest  pos- 
sible minimum  of  rooms,  but  that  each  room 
shall  also  be  reduced  to  its  lowest  possible 
minimum  of  space.  Yet  still  there  is  no  end 
to  the  rising  rental.  Such  a  process  has  been 
going  on  in  New  York  City,  for  example, 
for  many  years.  It  has  now  reached  its  cul- 
minating point,  for  the  cost  of  sites  and  the 
cost  of  building  have  made  it  impossible 
longer  to  build  any  kind  of  low-rental  homes, 
no  matter  how  skilfully  they  may  be  planned, 
[  48  ] 


HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

at  a  price  that  will  return  a  profit  to  the  in- 
vestor. 

New  York  City  has  thus  been  suddenly 
awakened  to  an  appalling  condition  of 
housing.  The  shortage  of  houses,  due  to 
suspension  of  building  during  the  war,  has 
made  possible  a  form  of  rent  profiteering  of 
which  far  too  many  landlords  are  willing  to 
take  advantage.  Prices  of  housing  property 
have  soared  as  in  a  land  boom  on  the  open 
prairie,  but  they  are  based  on  the  exorbitant 
rentals  which  the  owners  are  able  to  extort. 
Speculation,  everywhere  the  dominant  mo- 
tive in  house  building,  is  suddenly  provided 
with  a  new  weapon  of  mighty  and  sinister 
power.  London  is  struggling  in  the  same 
predicament,  and  Parliament  is  being  im- 
plored to  grant  relief.  Paris  is  in  the  midst 
of  a  housing  disaster.  Almost  all  large 
centers  in  the  United  States  are  affected  to  a 
greater  or  less  degree. 

A  study  of  the  conditions  surrounding 
home  ownership,  this  now  almost  extinct  in- 
stitution in  New  York  City,  should  be  of 
more  than  local  interest.* 

"The  proportion  of  rent-payers  is  increas- 

*  "Home  Ownership  in  New  York  City,"  by  Herbert  S. 
Swan.  The  Journal  of  the  American  Institute  of  Archi- 
tects, January,  1918. 

[  49  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

ing;  the  proportion  of  home-owners  decreas- 
ing. Tenantcy  is  becoming  the  universal 
rule  and  home-ownership  the  rare  exception. 
The  ownership  of  a  free  home  is  a  tradition 
of  the  past.  If  the  present  tendency  con- 
tinues, it  will  only  be  a  question  of  time  when 
the  ownership  and  use  of  land  in  New  York 
City  will  be  completely  divorced,  and  the 
whole  city  will,  in  effect,  stand  in  the  rela- 
tion of  a  tenant  to  an  absentee  landlord. 

"The  percentage  of  owned  homes  in  the 
city  is  declining;  that  of  rented  homes  in- 
creasing. In  1900,  one  family  in  every  eight 
owned  its  home;  in  1910,  only  one  family  in 
every  nine  owned  its  home.  In  1900,  one 
family  in  every  twenty  owned  a  free  home; 
in  1910,  only  one  family  in  twenty-eight 
owned  a  free  home.  In  1900,  42.2  per  cent 
of  the  owned  homes  were  free  homes;  in 
1910,  30.2  per  cent  of  the  owned  homes  were 
free  homes.  During  this  ten-year  period  the 
total  number  of  homes  in  the  city  increased 
41.2  per  cent;  the  number  of  free  homes  de- 
clined .8  of  1  per  cent.  The  number  of  free 
homes  in  the  city,  instead  of  being  increased 
by  the  erection  of  new  homes,  lost  one  of  the 
homes  owned  free  in  1900  for  every  thous- 
and new  homes  constructed  during  the 
decade. 

[  50  ] 


HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

"Out  of  every  thousand  new  homes  con- 
structed in  the  decade,  110  were  owned 
homes.  In  Chicago  290  were  owned  homes ; 
in  Cleveland,  312;  in  St.  Louis,  327;  in  Phil- 
adelphia, 451.  In  only  one  of  the  next  five 
largest  cities  was  the  number  of  new  owned 
homes  per  thousand  less  than  in  New  York. 
In  Boston  it  was  88.  Of  the  fifty-one  cities 
in  the  United  States  with  a  population  ex- 
ceeding 100,000  the  number  of  owned  homes 
per  thousand  new  homes  was  probably 
greater  in  Spokane  than  in  any  other  city. 
There  is  was  584. 

"The  number  of  free  homes  per  thousand 
new  homes  was  a  minus  quantity  in  New 
York  City,  but  in  Philadelphia  95  out  of 
every  1,000  new  homes  built  were  free 
homes;  in  Cleveland,  112;  in  Chicago,  126; 
and  in  St.  Louis,  173.  Even  in  Boston  it 
was  8. 

"In  Spokane  it  was  283. 

"Chicago,  with  less  than  half  as  many 
homes,  has  more  owned  homes  than  New 
York  City,  which  has  only  two-thirds  as 
many  free  homes  as  Chicago.  Philadelphia, 
with  less  than  one-third  the  number  of 
homes,  has  more  free  homes  than  New  York 
City. 

"The  situation  affecting  home-ownership 
[  51  ] 


THE    JOKE    ABOUT   HOUSING 

in  the  city  (New  York)  may  be  epitomized 
under  four  points : 

"1.  The  number  of  rented  homes  is  in- 
creasing faster  than  the  number  of  owned 
homes. 

"2.  While  there  is  an  increase  in  the  num- 
ber of  owned  homes,  this  increase  occurs 
not  among  the  free  homes,  but  exclusively 
among  the  encumbered  homes.  In  fact, 
there  are  more  homes  mortgaged  in  a  given 
period  than  there  are  homes  purchased.  In 
other  words,  the  encumbered  homes  are  in- 
creasing at  the  expense  of  the  free  homes 
whose  owners  are  gradually  either  mort- 
gaging them  or  disposing  of  them  to  join  the 
tenant  class. 

"3.  The  owners  of  encumbered  homes  are 
not  paying  off  and  cancelling  their  mort- 
gages in  order  that  they  might  become  the 
owners  of  free  homes.  A  new  lien  is  con- 
tracted for  every  mortgage  liquidated  on  an 
owned  home. 

"4.  Only  a  moiety  of  the  equity  is  ac- 
quired in  any  new  home  purchased.  For 
every  home  in  which  a  full  equity  is  acquired, 
another  home  is  mortgaged." 

But  New  York  cannot  now  alone  extri- 
cate itself  from  the  pit  into  which  it  has  al- 
lowed itself  to  fall.  Government  of  some 
[52] 


HOUSES   AND   WAGES 

kind  must  come  to  its  aid.  And  with  an 
ignorance  that  is  as  sublime  as  it  is  pathetic, 
it  is  suggested  by  many  that  funds  at  a  low 
rate  of  interest  should  be  provided  by  the 
State,  in  order  that  house  building  may  be 
financed.  Some  set  the  figure  as  high  as 
$20,000,000,  but  that  it  should  be  supposed 
that  such  a  method  will  effect  a  permanent 
cure,  is  incredible. 

Government  must  aid,  no  doubt,  but  it 
must  first  formulate  a  complete  program 
based  upon  curing  a  disease  and  not  upon 
alleviating  a  symptom.  The  State,  or  the 
City  must  surround  whatever  credit  system 
may  be  adopted  with  legislation  that  will 
defeat  the  effect  of  land  increments;  other- 
wise nothing  but  a  momentary  improvement 
can  be  gained.  Without  such  safeguards, 
another  speculative  cycle  will  be  launched  on 
a  large  scale,  out  of  which  land  owners  will 
reap  enormous  profits,  and  by  which  the 
housing  question  will  again  be  brought  to  a 
worse  condition  than  now  confronts  it.  As 
site  costs  rise  wherever  houses  are  built, 
house  costs  must  increase.  This  is  known 
to  every  one  who  knows  anything  about  the 
use  of  land  and  the  building  of  houses.  Yet 
the  answer  has  always  been  sought  in  two 
ways:  First,  in  a  tenement  house  code, 
[  53  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

which,  after  landlords  have  taken  such  an 
advantage  of  tenants  that  the  slums  become 
a  public  nuisance  and  a  public  menace,  is 
enacted  as  a  law  which  fixes  the  minimum 
conditions  of  safety,  sanitation  and  space  in 
a  tenement  house  (which  minimum  condi- 
tions at  once  become  the  maximum!). 
Second,  in  skillful  architectural  planning 
whereunder  the  family  might  be  compressed 
into  the  smallest  possible  area.  It  has  all 
been  not  only  wrong,  but  wholly  ineffective, 
—  and  yet  it  now  is  proposed,  in  several 
states  and  cities  to  continue  the  same  scheme 
with  government  funds.* 

In  this  connection  it  is  worthy  of  noting 
that  Dr.  Addison,  then  President  of  the  Lo- 
cal Government  Board  of  England,  the  body 
first  charged  with  the  administration  of 
the  new  housing  Act  in  that  country,  said 
the  following  things  at  the  second  reading 
of  the  Housing  Bill  in  Parliament:  "The 
war  has  caused  arrears  in  the  building  of 
houses  to  the  extent  of  350,000.  Then  there 
were  a  very  large  number  of  houses  unfit  for 
human  habitation.  An  incomplete  return  of 
1914  showed  that  there  were  70,000  houses 
quite  unfit  for  habitation,  and  a  further 

*  For  suggested  types  of  wise  legislation  looking  to 
permanent  improvement  in  housing  see  pages  96  and  156. 

[  54  ] 


HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

300,000  that  were  seriously  defective.  There 
were  about  3,000,000  people  living  in  over- 
crowded conditions  —  more  than  two  in  a 
room  —  and  in  the  area  covered  by  the 
London  County  Council  their  return  showed 
758,000  living  under  these  dreadful  condi- 
tions. The  cost  to  the  nation  in  caring  for 
the  tuberculosis  generated  in  these  slums 
must  be  many  millions  a  year.  Therefore 
the  question  of  the  slum  areas  must  be  dealt 
with  as  part  of  their  housing  scheme.  No 
scheme  which  centered  solely  on  building 
houses  on  open  land  would  suffice  to  deal 
with  existing  evils.  There  were  1,800  Local 
Authorities  entitled  to  deal  with  housing; 
but  their  powers  were  inadequate  to  remedy 
the  evils.  The  cost  of  acquisition  of  sites 
was  almost  prohibitive  in  every  case,  and  no 
solution  of  the  problem  could  be  complete 
until  they  could  make  the  cost  of  acquisition 
of  land  in  some  way  commensurate  with  its 
value."  * 

Let  no  one  think  that  the  condition  is  any 
better  or  any  different  in  the  United  States ! 
Our  problem  is  not  alone  one  of  building 
new  houses  or  of  scrapping  several  hundred 
thousand  old  ones  as  well,  which  cannot  with 
safety  remain  as  a  menace  to  both  industry 

*  From  a  press  report  in  the  London  Daily  News. 
[  55  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

and -our  form  of  government,  —  it  is  frankly 
a  problem  of  land  control. 

The  Land  Acquisition  Act  was  discussed 
in  Parliament  on  Thursday,  April  11,  1919. 
It  provided  for  the  acquisition  of  land  at  its 
post-war  inflated  value,  and  it  is  very  curious 
to  discover  that  while  Sir  Gordon  Hewart, 
the  Attorney  General,  stated  that  the  Bill 
was  based  upon  the  recommendations  of  the 
Committee  on  Land  Acquisition,  of  which 
Mr.  Leslie  Scott  was  Chairman  and  which 
had  been  conducting  a  long  study  of  the  land 
problem  in  England,  Mr.  Scott  himself  rose 
in  Parliament  and  moved  the  rejection  of 
the  Bill  on  the  ground  that  the  Government 
"had  failed  to  provide  a  cheap,  simple  and 
expeditious  procedure,  and  had  made  no  at- 
tempt to  deal  with  the  subject  of  compen- 
sation as  a  whole,  and  particularly  with 
'betterment  and  injurious  affection.'  "  When 
it  is  remembered  that  during  the  war,  Eng- 
land, under  the  Defense  of  the  Realm  Act 
took  land  for  housing  at  its  pre-war  value, 
one  is  not  astonished  at  the  indignant  protest 
of  Liberals,  such  as  Sir  Donald  Maclean, 
for  example,  who  derided  the  Bill  in  unmeas- 
ured terms  and  characterized  it  as  ren- 
dering worthless  the  whole  social  program 
proposed. 

[  56  ] 


HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

It  is  plain  that  the  vast  housing  schemes 
of  England,  upon  which  her  whole  industrial 
fabric  may  now  be  said  in  large  measure  to 
depend  —  since  the  housing  shortage  in 
that  country  is  a  real  menace  —  have  been 
seriously  affected  by  the  passage  of  the  Land 
Acquisition  Act.  The  Government,  under 
the  Act,  is  obliged  to  take  land  at  its  market 
value  and  not  at  its  actual  value.  It 
seemed  impossible  that  England,  in  the  pres- 
ent crisis,  would  fail  to  adopt  a  new  national 
attitude  on  the  land  question.  But  there,  as 
here,  the  old  theories  of  land  ownership  and 
the  right  to  appropriate  site  increments,  still 
permeates  the  national  consciousness.  Less 
so  there,  than  here,  perhaps,  since  land  has 
been  so  little  available  for  ownership  in  Eng- 
land that  most  people  are  resigned  to  a  land- 
less condition;  this  ought  to  make  the 
problem  of  land  control  easier,  instead  of 
harder,  for  land  control  means  that  a  people 
must  surrender  its  right  to  use  land  as  it 
pleases,  without  any  consideration  of  the 
public  welfare,  and  also  discontinue  the 
present  system  whereunder  land  owners  are 
free  to  tax  humanity  to  the  uttermost  point 
the  traffic  will  bear.  There  is  no  solution  of 
the  housing  problem  —  and  thus  no  solu- 
tion of  the  other  problems  that  are  every- 
[  57  ] 


THE   JOKE   ABOUT  HOUSING 

where  presenting  themselves  in  increased 
costs,  higher  wages,  and  the  endless  cycle  of 
pyramiding  —  until  the  fundamental  ques- 
tion of  land  use  is  solved.  The  very  fact 
that  England's  industrial  life  is  now  in 
danger,  and  that  she  needs  to  build  a  million 
new  houses  to  save  it,  does  not  deter  land 
owners  from  demanding  a  Bill  that  will 
enable  them  to  put  the  highest  possible  price 
on  their  land.  The  very  presence  of  the  na- 
tion's dire  need  for  land,  sends  prices  soaring 
as  though  gold  had  been  discovered  in  a 
suburban  lot. 

Think  for  a  moment  of  what  this  means. 
It  means  that  the  state  must  pay  more  for 
the  land  than  it  was  worth  until  the  need  of 
the  state  became  apparent.  This  extra  cost 
can  be  met  in  only  two  ways :  first,  by  build- 
ing more  houses  to  the  acre  and  thus  de- 
feating the  very  object  of  the  whole  housing 
scheme,  or,  second,  by  charging  a  higher 
rent  for  the  houses,  when  built.  But, 
as  in  no  case  can  the  workmen  afford 
to  pay  a  fair  rental  for  these  houses, 
the  new  law  compels  the  community  in 
which  the  houses  are  built  to  grant  a 
subsidy,  the  money  for  which  is  obtained 
by  the  compulsory  levy  of  a  special  tax  of 
one  penny  in  the  pound.  As  even  this  tax, 
[  58  ] 


HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

added  to  the  rental  paid  by  the  tenants,  will 
not  suffice  to  pay  the  interest  charges  on  the 
loan,  the  cost  of  upkeep,  and  provide  amor- 
tization, the  State  here  steps  in  and  agrees  to 
make  up  the  difference.  As  an  idea  of  what 
this  difference  means,  it  may  be  stated  that 
the  rehousing  schemes  for  London  will  cost 
the  State  about  $5,000,000  a  year,  until  they 
have  been  amortized.  At  this  rate  the  an- 
nual cost  of  new  housing  to  the  communities 
of  England  and  to  the  nation  will  run  into 
a  colossal  sum.  Every  dollar  paid  for  land, 
above  its  fair  value,  increases  this  sum.  More 
than  that,  the  value  added  to  the  unbuilt  land 
by  the  vast  operations  of  the  Government, 
will  also  be  presented  to  the  owner. 

Thus,  when  the  workers  of  England  are 
asked  to  produce  more,  as  a  means  of  res- 
cuing their  country  from  her  present  in- 
dustrial and  financial  difficulties,  they  may 
well  look  at  the  land-owners  with  a  wonder- 
ing eye.  The  tax  which  they  levy  is  only  an 
act  of  piracy. 

( Since  the  writing  of  the  foregoing  para- 
graph, the  official  statement  of  the  Ministry 
of  Health,  up  to  October  31,  1919,  shows 
that  under  the  terms  of  the  new  Housing  Act 
there  have  been  submitted  to  the  Ministry 
5460  schemes  for  new  housing  develop- 
[  59  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

ments.  These  involved  a  land  area  of  47,250 
acres  and  houses  to  the  number  of  41,023. 
Of  these  schemes,  1950  involving  21,850 
acres  of  land  and  27,486  houses  have  been 
approved.  When  it  is  considered  that  the 
lowest  estimate,  on  a  most  conservative 
basis,  called  for  not  less  than  500,000  houses 
in  order  to  meet  the  crisis  in  England,  it 
may  easily  be  understood  how  far  behind 
lags  the  effort  to  meet  it. 

Commenting  on  the  situation,  coincidently 
with  the  publication  of  the  figures  above 
cited,  the  Westminster  Gazette  remarks: 
"Dr.  Addison  and  Sir  Kingsley  Wood  ex- 
plained to  the  Parliamentary  Housing 
Group  on  Tuesday  the  progress  of  the  Gov- 
ernment housing  scheme.  We  had  statistics 
which  are  already  too  familiar  about  sites 
acquired,  loans  authorized,  and  schemes  sub- 
mitted. And  we  would  willingly  give  all  the 
statistics  for  a  sight  of  a  few  completed 
houses  built  under  Government  plans. 
How  long  is  the  present  deadlock  to  last? 
Nearly  a  year  has  passed  since  the  armistice, 
and  for  months  before  the  armistice  plans 
were  said  to  be  in  preparation.  It  need  not 
take  a  year  to  build  a  house,  yet  no  houses 
have  been  built.  Respectable  people  walk 
the  streets  with  sandwich-boards  proclaim- 
[  60  ] 


HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

ing  that  they  cannot  get  a  home,  and  the 
Minister  responsible  retorts  that  he  has 
passed  plans  for  27,000  houses  to  meet  a 
shortage  of  half  a  million.  Yet  even  the 
27,000  only  exist  on  paper.  Unless  Dr. 
Addison  can  get  it  into  his  head  that  houses 
are  substantial  things  of  brick  and  mortar, 
in  which  people  can  live,  and  not  something 
drawn  on  a  sheet  of  paper,  he  should  make 
room  for  somebody  who  has  more  practical 
notions  on  the  matter.  .  .  .  Let  us  realize 
that  with  every  month  housing  conditions  in 
the  villages  and  in  the  industrial  quarters  of 
the  towns  are  becoming  worse.  ..." 

One  is  sorry  for  Dr.  Addison.  Parlia- 
ment handed  him  an  impossible  task,  for  it 
obliges  land  to  be  taken  for  housing  schemes 
at  its  market  and  not  its  real  value.  Up  to 
the  present  he  has  had  the  assistance  of  the 
Government's  Valuation  Department,  which 
has  been  able  to  effect  some  savings  in  land 
costs.  These  have  averaged  from  £119  in 
country  areas  to  £212  in  urban  sections. 
But  only  a  fraction  of  the  necessary  land 
has  been  acquired  and  the  prices  will 
continually  go  higher  and  higher.  How 
strange  that  in  war  the  Government  could 
take  land  for  housing  at  its  pre-war  ac- 
tual value,  and  now  is  obliged  to  take  it 
[  61  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

at  its  post-war  market  value  1  A  thousand 
Dr.  Addisons  could  not  overcome  such  a 
condition,  for  the  mounting  price  of  land  is 
assuredly  reflected  in  the  cost  of  materials 
and  the  wages  of  workmen. 

It  is  apparent,  therefore,  that  the  whole 
English  re-housing  scheme  is  in  grave  dan- 
ger of  becoming  a  fiasco.  In  addition  to 
the  difficulties  mentioned,  there  are  others. 
Loans  are  hard  to  obtain,  even  under  the  se- 
curity offered  by  the  Housing  Act,  for  the 
mounting  cost  of  good  houses  frightens  the 
tax-payers,  on  whom  a  considerable  part  of 
the  burden  will  fall.  Thus  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing to  read  in  the  English  press,  wherever 
one  turns,  a  persistent  clamor  for  any 
kind  of  housing  such  as  will  afford  at  least 
temporary  shelter.  The  ready-cut  wooden 
houses  used  in  Canada  and  the  United  States 
are  being  discussed,  and  their  importation  in 
vast  quantities  is  being  considered.  Violent 
opposition  manifests  itself,  first  from  those 
who  cannot  bear  the  thought  of  an  English 
countryside  littered  with  the  barbarities  of 
America,  and  second  from  the  workers  them- 
selves, who  have  already  raised  the  cry, 
"Wood  for  the  workers,  bricks  for  their 
betters." 

Apparently  the  Government  is  feeling  out 
[  62  ] 


HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

the  opposition,  pleading  the  urgent  need  of 
houses  and  the  financial  situation  of  the 
Treasury  as  factors  which  may  compel  a  con- 
siderable reduction  in  the  quality  of  the 
houses  to  be  built  under  its  program. 

The  present  serves  to  illumine  the  spec- 
tacle more  vividly  than  ever  before,  and  one 
seems  to  see  the  human  race  shackled  and 
manacled  to  an  idea,  yet  blind  to  the  fact 
that  the  idea  spells  disaster,  perhaps  death, 
to  civilization;  blind  to  the  burden  under 
which  it  staggers  along;  and  blinder  still  to 
the  reason  why  that  burden  continues  to  in- 
crease, now  in  the  shape  of  rent,  now  in  food, 
now  in  clothing,  now  in  this  necessity,  now 
in  that.  Land  is  our  national  Monte  Carlo. 
It  is  the  green  table  on  which  we  gamble 
away  the  wealth  of  the  nation,  and  its  pros- 
perity and  well-being  and  social  stability  as 
well.  It  is  idle  to  condemn  present  land- 
owners. If  the  landed  of  today  were  to  be 
usurped  by  the  landless,  there  would  come 
no  change.  It  is  not  a  class  problem,  but  a 
system  that  is  the  fault.  Out  of  that  system 
spring  huge  profits  in  land,  but  always  with 
the  same  direful  result  to  the  community 
that  gives  them  away.  We  see  district  after 
district  become  congested,  reduced  to  slums, 
given  over  to  the  dregs  of  the  cup  that  a  few 
[  63  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

have  drained.  The  evidence  is  piled  moun- 
tain high,  but  the  will  to  find  the  solution  has 
not  yet  germinated  in  the  national  conscious- 
ness. Sometime  it  will  come,  because  it  will 
be  forced  by  conditions  beside  which  those  at 
present  annoying  New  York  City  will  seem 
trifling.  Yet,  there  is  still  time  to  ward 
them  off.  And  who  should  do  it? 

Why  not  the  business  men  of  the  United 
States,  the  employers  of  labor,  the  masters 
of  finance,  the  monopolists  of  credit?  What 
would  contribute  more  to  social  and  labor 
stability  than  a  stabilized  rent?  That  is  the 
phase  of  the  problem  which  ought  to  present 
itself  to  intelligent  men,  yet  we  waste  so 
much  of  our  time  in  the  United  States  over 
a  discussion  of  class  issues  rather  than  over 
systems,  that  it  seems  almost  idle  to  hope 
that  any  perception  of  the  real  nature  of  the 
housing  problem  will  dawn  on  our  captains 
of  industry,  until  it  is  too  late.  But  the  warn- 
ing is  writ  so  large,  just  now,  that  perhaps 
some  of  them  will  see  it.  If  so,  we  shall  get 
requests  for  State  action  such  as  will  make 
possible  the  control  of  large  areas  of  unused 
land,  whereon  communities  may  be  estab- 
lished under  non-speculative  conditions. 
Also,  we  shall  get  a  perception  of  the  neces- 
sity for  demolishing  slum  areas,  as  national 
[  64  ] 


HOUSES  AND  WAGES 

menaces  to  our  physical  and  moral  well- 
being,  and  their  replacement  with  decent 
dwellings.  It  is  a  large  view  that  is  now 
needed;  woe  be  unto  us  if  we  take  the  little 
view  of  the  palliative  housing  reformer. 

The  housing  question  will  not  down  until 
it  is  settled  right,  and  all  efforts  to  com- 
promise in  the  solution  will  only  make  the 
final  cost  more  staggering. 


IV 

THE  EMPLOYER  AND  THE 
HOUSING  QUESTION 

WHAT  is  the  interest  of  the  employer 
in  the  housing  question?  Looking 
backward  to  the  early  beginnings  of 
centralized  industry  in  the  United  States, 
we  find  that  good  houses  were  once  esteemed 
as  an  indispensable  part  of  the  plant. 
Among  the  earlier  established  cotton  manu- 
facturing industries  in  New  England,  for 
example,  there  may  be  found  traces  of  ex- 
cellent corporation  houses ;  some  of  them  are 
of  great  architectural  interest,  and  indicate 
that  our  real  American  traditions  of  the 
house  and  the  home  had  not  then  been  tram- 
pled under  foot  by  competitive  industry. 
But  visiting  these  little  towns  of  today,  one 
is  depressed  at  the  sight  of  such  slums  and 
congested  areas  as  now  exist.  Little  by 
little  they  have  crept  in,  ever  growing 
meaner  and  more  squalid,  until  they  now 
beggar  description. 

[  66  ] 


THE  HOUSING  QUESTION 

Manufacturers  have  entirely  failed  to  note 
the  presence  in  their  midst  of  a  microbe  bent 
upon  their  destruction.  They  may,  them- 
selves, in  many  cases,  have  participated  in 
the  havoc  caused  by  this  tiny  organism. 
They  may  themselves  have  reaped  large 
profits  from  having  bought  land  cheap  and 
sold  it  dear.  Someone  has  been  doing  that 
in  every  community.  But  the  total  effect 
has  been  to  lower  the  living  conditions  of  a 
large  body  of  workers.  It  would  be  inter- 
esting to  compare  the  percentage  of  wages 
spent  for  rent  out  of  the  wages  received  by 
a  mill  worker  in  Rhode  Island,  in  1840,  and 
the  percentage  spent  in  rent  by  the  worker 
of  today.  But  the  living  conditions  repre- 
sent a  comparison  that  can  be  made  by  any- 
one who  cares  to  make  a  little  pilgrimage 
through  the  cotton  manufacturing  districts. 
It  is  true  that  the  corporation  has  sup- 
planted, almost  entirely,  the  individual 
owner.  The  point  of  contact  between  actual 
owner  and  worker  has  been  lost,  and  with  it 
that  degree  of  human  interest  and  brotherli- 
ness  that  existed  in  the  early  days  of  manu- 
facturing in  New  England,  when  the  master 
was  one  of  the  workers  and  when  all  were 
largely  of  what  is  now  known  as  American 
stock  and  parentage.  The  stockholders  are 
[  67  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

now  the  owners  and  they  are  represented  by 
a  hired  agent  whose  business  it  is  to  produce 
dividends.  Human  interest  no  longer  ex- 
ists. Competition  has  reached  a  point  where 
an  agent  cannot  alone  change  the  housing 
conditions  surrounding  his  particular  fac- 
tory. If  his  competitors  will  not  act,  then 
he  cannot  act,  except  under  the  fortunate 
circumstances  of  a  very  prosperous  business 
and  the  willingness  of  the  stockholders  to 
permit  an  expenditure  of  their  dividends.  In 
the  larger  manufacturing  districts,  where 
many  industries  cluster,  no  one  is  respon- 
sible for  the  housing  conditions,  and  hitherto, 
it  has  been  generally  accepted  that  the  manu- 
facturer had  no  interest  in  his  workers  be- 
yond the  wage  paid  and  the  work  done. 

But  what  is  this  microbe  that  continually 
ravages  industry  of  every  kind?  It  is  the 
microbe  of  unearned  increment,  —  of  the 
value  added  to  land  by  community  growth, 
and  appropriated  by  individuals.  The  ad- 
dition of  value  is  a  natural  thing.  The  use 
value  of  land  must  increase  as  its  productiv- 
ity or  desirability  increases.  But  that  use 
value,  as  has  so  often  been  pointed  out,  be- 
longs to  those  who  create  it.  Even  if  there 
are  still  those  who  do  not  and  will  not  agree 
to  that  theory,  which  seems  to  be  the  most 
[  68  ] 


THE  HOUSING  QUESTION 

simple  form  of  economic  justice,  it  remains 
to  be  pointed  out  that  the  appropriation  of 
that  unearned  increment  by  the  individual 
land  owner  constitutes  a  disease  that  is  con- 
tinuously attacking  all  forms  of  organized 
industry.  It  is  an  enemy  which  is  fatal  to 
any  wage  or  labor  stability.  It  is  wholly  op- 
posed to  the  point  of  view  of  the  intelligent 
manufacturer,  who  seeks  to  make  goods  by 
employing  workers  and  paying  them  a  fair 
wage.  Why?  Because  the  individuals  who 
capture  the  unearned  increment  on  land  are, 
in  reality,  adding  a  capital  charge  to  all  in- 
dustry. It  is  a  capital  which  does  not  ap- 
pear in  any  shares  of  stock.  It  is  a  capital 
charge  over  which  the  manufacturer  has  no 
control.  But  it  is  a  capital  upon  which  the 
holders  demand  the  payment  of  a  dividend 
by  the  manufacturer,  and  the  collection  of 
which  they  are  in  a  position  to  enforce 
whether  the  manufacturer  wills  or  no.  They 
may,  and  often  do,  ruin  him,  in  securing  their 
payment.  Thus  the  manufacturer  who  is 
located  in  a  community  where  site  values 
are  still  rising  (and  where,  as  a  consequence, 
the  citizens  point  with  pride  to  the  growing 
wealth  of  their  community)  is  continually 
having  his  cost  of  doing  business  increased. 
His  own  taxes  are  likely  to  rise,  in  the  first 
[  69  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

place.  They  generally  do.  But  this  added 
burden  is  but  a  drop  in  the  bucket  compared 
to  the  general  rise  which  takes  place  and 
which  must  be  met  by  the  manufacturer. 
His  workmen  find  the  cost  of  living  to  be  on 
the  increase.  Their  house  rent  is  raised. 
Other  things  rise  in  proportion,  but  house 
rent  is  a  large  factor  and  one  that  always 
meets  with  a  grudging  and  surly  reception. 
Little  extra  added  costs  in  other  things  may 
pass  without  too  much  complaining,  but  the 
landlord  is  always  regarded  as  an  exploiter, 
and  even  though  he  only  raises  the  rent  to 
meet  his  own  added  cost  of  living  and  doing 
business,  the  tenant  always  looks  upon  him 
with  suspicion  as  a  kind  of  bandit.  The  very 
name  of  landlord  stinks  in  the  nostrils  of 
most  tenants,  and  by  the  same  token,  the 
tenant  is  often  looked  upon  by  the  landlord 
as  a  sort  of  necessary  evil  who  pays  a  divi- 
dend in  the  shape  of  rent.  That  is  the  psy- 
chology of  the  relationship  as  a  usual  thing, 
and  will  explain  one  of  the  reasons  why  a 
rising  rent  is  more  menacing  to  the  manu- 
facturer or  employer  than  any  other  single 
factor  in  the  pyramiding  process. 

These  happenings  repeat  themselves  al- 
most daily,  sometimes  on  a  small  and  almost 
imperceptible  scale;  sometimes  on  a  scale 
[  70  ] 


THE  HOUSING  QUESTION 

that  leaves  nothing  whatever  to  the  imagina- 
tion. 

*  "When  the  Lacka wanna  Steel  Co.  put 
its  big  plant  on  a  stretch  of  vacant  land  near 
Buffalo  and  offered  work  there  for  several 
thousand  men,  the  town  land  was  worth 
$1,279,000.  The  city  of  Lackawanna,  14,000 
population,  grew  up  there,  and  the  land 
values  skyrocketed  from  $91  per  person  to 
$644,  the  plant  land  being  eliminated  in  each 
case.  That  inflated  value  for  standing-room 
was,  in  fact,  enough  to  keep  about  half  the 
Lackawanna  Steel  Company  employees 
from  making  their  homes  there  at  all,  while 
many  of  those  who  do  live  there,  huddle  in 
dingy  saloon  lodgings  and  leave  large  areas 
idle  in  the  hands  of  the  land  speculators. 
The  annual  value  of  a  man's  full  share  of 
Lackawanna  land  for  himself  and  family  of 
five  at  6  per  cent  is,  at  the  original  value, 
5  X  $91  X  .06,  or  $27.30;  at  the  enhanced 
value,  $193.  Money  spent  on  land  rent  can- 
not be  spent  on  house  rent.  The  annual  cost 
of  a  wholesome  house  is,  let  us  say,  $125  a 
year.  If  his  modest  lot  cost  only  an  addi- 
tional $10  or  $20  annually,  the  worker  could 

*  "The  Housing  Problem  in  War  and  Peace,"  Chapter  by 
Richard  S.  Childs.  The  Jourrial  of  the  American  Insti- 
tute of  Architects,  1917. 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

more  nearly  afford  those  superior  accommo- 
dations which  the  housing  and  city-planning 
experts  yearn  to  give  him. 

"The  net  unearned  increment  which 
Lackawanna  has  given  as  a  princely  gift  to 
miscellaneous  lucky  private  land-owners  and 
speculators  is  $6,788,000,  a  figure  large 
enough  in  itself  to  explain  why  Lackawanna 
is  mostly  ragged  and  squalid  instead  of 
dainty  and  wholesome.* 

"The  Lackawanna  Steel  Co.,  after  cre- 
ating the  increment,  finally  bought  addi- 
tional land  at  the  enhanced  values  and 
erected  a  group  of  good  houses  for  some  of 
its  employees,  but  was  unable  to  charge  to 
its  low-paid  workers  rents  high  enough  to 
make  the  operation  anything  but  a  philan- 
thropic proposition. 

"The  U.  S.  Steel  Corporation  has  taken 
the  logical  next  step  by  purchasing  town 
land  in  various  places  at  the  same  time  as  the 
land  for  the  new  plants,  thus  in  some  degree 
anticipating  and  capturing  the  increment  for 
the  benefit  of  its  workers.  In  some  degree, 
I  say,  for  the  coming  of  a  mysterious  pur- 
chaser who  buys  land  by  the  square  mile 

*  These  figures  are  taken  from  an  elaborate  unpub- 
lished report  by  H.  S.  Swan,  of  New  York,  prepared  for 
the  Committee  on  New  Industrial  Towns. 


THE  HOUSING  QUESTION 

cannot  be  altogether  concealed,  and  the  Cor- 
poration which,  of  course,  has  no  power  of 
condemnation,  gets  mercilessly  mulcted  by 
the  land-owners  who  get  wind  of  the  opera- 
tion in  time  to  raise  their  prices. 

"Having  thus  acquired  the  town-site,  the 
Steel  Corporation  plans  the  streets  and  sells 
off  the  lots  without  attempting  to  reap  a 
profit.  But  as  population  arrives,  the  un- 
earned increment  arrives  too  and  confers 
profits  promiscuously  upon  the  successive 
land-owners.  In  Gary,  Indiana,  which  this 
Corporation  created,  in  1906,  on  vacant 
sand-dunes,  this  generous  policy  resulted  in 
distributing  $22,358,900  net  to  various 
private  owners  and  speculators  during  the 
next  ten  years,  a  heavy  burden  upon  the  steel 
workers  in  their  efforts  to  buy  housing  ac- 
commodations or  anything  else."  * 

This  is  precisely  what  is  meant  in  saying 
that  the  value  added  to  land  by  industry  con- 
stituted a  capital  charge  on  that  industry 
itself.  Those  who  own  the  land  so  raised  in 
value  demand,  and  are  able  to  get,  a  higher 
return  from  it.  The  moment  it  is  sold  to 
build  upon,  that  higher  return  makes  its 

*  From  'a  report  to  the  Committee  on  New  Industrial 
Towns,  by  Dr.  R.  M.  Haig,  of  Columbia  University,  re- 
published  in  part  in  the  Political  Science  Quarterly, 
March,  1917. 

[  73  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

presence  felt  by  a  necessarily  higher  rental 
for  the  house  —  or  else  in  forcing  a  conges- 
tion on  that  land  such  as  will  produce  the 
higher  return  at  a  lower  rental,  —  which  is 
the  beginning  of  slums. 

But  skilled  workers  will  no  longer  tolerate 
slums,  and  to  pay  the  higher  rent  resulting 
from  this  system,  the  wage-earner  soon  has 
to  have  a  higher  wage.  How  many  times 
the  average  wage-earner  of  fifty  has  gone 
through  that  process  in  this  country,  who 
knows?  And  yet  he  and  his  children  and 
his  children's  children  must  continue  in  the 
same  manner,  unless  the  pyramid  falls  to  the 
ground  before  many  years.  Each  time  it  is 
the  manufacturer  who  pays  first,  and  even 
though  the  process  can  go  on  for  quite  a 
long  time  without  bringing  ruin  in  its  wake, 
the  ultimate  end  ought  to  be  visible  to  any 
intelligent  manufacturer.  Camped  forever 
at  his  heels,  the  blood-sucking  leech  fattens 
itself  into  a  swollen  capitalization  over  which 
the  employer  has  no  control.  But  he  has  to 
pay.  The  dividend  has  to  come  out  of  pro- 
duction. All  commerce  is  dependent  upon 
production,  and  hence  it  is  upon  production 
that  the  primary  burden  falls.  The  manu- 
facturer can  and  does  distribute  it.  The 
merchant  pays  him  more  for  his  wares.  The 


THE  HOUSING  QUESTION 

customer  pays  the  merchant  more.  But  all 
the  time  it  is  production  that  is  paying  the 
bill.  All  the  time,  it  is  the  producer  who 
carries  the  burden.  The  fact  that  the  money 
finally  comes  out  of  the  pocket  of  the  con- 
sumer makes  no  difference,  for  without  pro- 
duction there  would  be  no  money  in  the 
pockets  of  the  consumers. 

Thus  it  is  to  the  manufacturer  as  though 
someone  were  continually  watering  his 
capital  stock  by  a  process  which  consisted  of 
putting  nothing  whatever  into  his  business, 
and  yet  of  taking  out  fresh  shares  of  stock 
every  time  the  town  grew  in  any  direction, 
or  the  country  grew,  or  the  state  grew,  or  the 
nation  grew  or  even  the  world  grew.  The 
process  is  slow  in  some  places ;  very  rapid  in 
others.  There  are  towns,  for  example,  which 
have  never  felt  the  effect  of  increasing  site 
values.  There  are  others  where  large  indus- 
tries have  grown  up  over  a  period  of  years, 
or  within  even  a  few  months,  where  slums, 
congestion,  high  rents,  and  general  chaos 
have  descended  upon  the  town  so  swiftly  that 
the  community  scarcely  realized  what  had 
happened.  On  the  whole,  the  community  is 
pleased.  Every  one  has  made  money.  Real 
estate  has  increased  in  cost.  The  demand 
for  building  has  grown.  There  are  more 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

men  and  women  to  spend  money  in  the  stores 
and  shops.  It  all  looks  like  prosperity.  In 
truth,  the  manufacturer,  who  is  alone  re- 
sponsible for  the  boom,  has  had  saddled  upon 
his  neck  an  extra  cost  of  doing  business 
which  will  presently  appear  in  the  demand 
of  his  workers  for  more  wages  to  meet  the 
higher  cost  of  living.  Why  the  higher  cost? 
Because  the  speculators  and  land-owners 
have  capitalized  the  necessities  of  the  hour 
into  a  huge  sum  upon  which  the  manufac- 
turer must  pay  a  dividend.  He  does  not 
pay  it  to  them  direct.  He  pays  it  to  his 
workers  who  then  pay  it  to  the  holders  of 
this  watered  stock.  These  land-holders,  who 
claim  their  rights  just  as  though  they  were 
stockholders,  have  put  absolutely  nothing 
into  the  manufacturer's  business.  They  have 
contributed  nothing  whatever  to  its  advan- 
tage or  towards  its  success.  They  have 
simply  been  leeches  sucking  the  blood  from 
his  business.  The  manufacturer  does  not 
realize  this.  He  is  accustomed  to  the  general 
belief  that  rising  land  costs  are  an  infallible 
indication  of  prosperity.  Besides,  he  is  very 
busy  with  his  plant.  He  is  occupied  with  the 
thousand  details  of  starting  or  running  a 
business.  He  is  not  interested  in  houses  for 
his  workers.  He  has  always  believed  that  a 
[  76  ] 


THE  HOUSING  QUESTION 

housing  demand  would  be  met  with  a  hous- 
ing supply.  He  is  willing  to  leave  that  to 
those  who  make  a  business  of  houses.  And 
they  are  very  willing  to  have  it  left  to  them. 
It  is  only  after  a  while  that  the  manufacturer 
discovers  what  has  happened.  Then,  he  re- 
sorts to  the  pyramiding  process  as  his  only 
method  of  meeting  the  demand  for  higher 
wages.  He  may  hold  out  against  paying 
them,  but  in  the  end  he  will  have  to  give  in. 
His  business  has  gone  the  way  of  all  others, 
into  the  pyramid  system,  there  to  stay  until 
the  question  of  international  trade  sets  up  a 
condition  where  pyramiding  will  not  answer 
the  problem.  The  world  is  very  near  that 
condition  today. 

Is  it  not  time  to  take  account  of  stock? 
Is  it  not  time  for  Production  to  find  out 
where  it  is  going?  Is  it  not  time  to  ask  how 
much  longer  the  pyramiding  process  can  go 
on?  It  is  the  Producer  who  must  ask.  The 
Consumer  meets  his  problem  by  demanding 
more  wages  from  the  Producer  with  which 
to  meet  his  rising  cost  of  living.  The  Pro- 
ducer meets  his  problem  by  fixing  a  higher 
price  on  his  productions.  How  much  longer 
can  he  go  on  fixing  a  higher  price? 

The  merchant,  or  distributor,  who  comes 
in  between  producer  and  consumer,  can 
C  77  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

solve  his  problem  by  raising  his  prices.  No 
other  course  is  left  to  him.  He  may 
grumble,  in  many  cases,  and  with  reason, 
where  he  is  compelled  to  accept  a  higher  cost 
price  while  his  selling  price  is  fixed.  But 
on  the  whole,  he  takes  care  of  himself.  He 
has  no  direct  interest  in  the  stock-watering 
process  that  dogs  the  heels  of  the  manu- 
facturer. He  leaves  that  problem  to  the 
manufacturer.  And  in  the  meantime,  a  cer- 
tain group  of  men  who  own  land,  or  who  deal 
in  land,  are  able  to  enjoy  a  financial  return 
based  utterly  upon  the  efforts  of  others.  The 
problem  is  not  an  individual  one,  nor  a  local 
one.  It  is  a  national  problem,  and  upon  its 
solution  depends  the  ability  of  the  American 
manufacturer  to  keep  our  economic  machine 
in  shape  to  meet  the  economic  machinery  of 
other  countries  in  the  markets  of  the  world. 
And  to  meet  other  grave  problems  as  well. 

There  are  also  many  inter-reactions  in  this 
stock-watering  process.  Higher  wages  al- 
ways mean  a  rise  in  the  cost  of  production, 
and  thus  the  users  of  raw  materials  may  have 
their  costs  raised  through  production  con- 
ditions a  thousand  miles  away.  All  of  these 
inter-reactions  are  continually  increasing 
the  cost  of  everything,  although  scientific  re- 
search and  mechanical  progress  are  continu- 
[  78  ] 


THE  HOUSING  QUESTION 

ally  increasing  the  volume  of  per  capita 
production. 

Scientific  volume  production  ought  to 
make  things  grow  continually  cheaper;  in- 
stead, they  grow  continually  dearer.  The 
larger  part  of  the  benefit  derived  from  im- 
proved methods  and  the  contributions  of 
scientific  research  are  more  than  swallowed 
up  by  the  increased  cost  of  labor,  due  to  the 
increased  cost  of  living,  due  to  the  dividends 
demanded  upon  the  watered  stock  which 
piles  up  wherever  the  activities  of  men  are 
centralized  in  a  community.  Instead  of  gain- 
ing by  its  unparalleled  achievements  in 
science  and  mechanics,  the  whole  industry 
of  the  world  is  actually  losing,  so  far  as  it  is 
a  benefit  to  the  progress  of  men.  The  charge 
for  using  the  surface  of  the  earth  to  live  on 
grows  higher  every  year. 

In  the  meantime,  the  pressure  of  life 
grows.  The  pace  becomes  more  feverish  at 
every  step.  Both  master  and  workman  are 
caught  in  the  same  net.  They  are  contend- 
ing against  an  enemy  whom  they  will  not 
recognize  and  yet  whose  shadow  stalks  past 
them  like  a  ghost.  The  capital  stock  of  the 
manufacturing  industry  is  not  only  being 
watered,  but  the  capital  stock  of  our  agricul- 
tural industry  is  watered  equally  and  just  as 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

continuously.  In  truth,  we  are  watering  the 
capital  stock  of  the  nation,  which  is  our  land. 
We  are  making  it  a  more  expensive  part  of 
our  production  plant  every  day,  every 
month,  every  year.  The  process  never  ceases. 
It  is  retarded  here  and  there,  by  the  rise  and 
fall  of  certain  industries.  Site  values  de- 
cline in  some  places,  but  they  do  not  relieve 
the  rising  charge  on  land,  for  they  generally 
represent  areas  that  quickly  deteriorate,  gen- 
erally end  in  becoming  slums,  cut  down  tax- 
able values,  and  merely  help  to  add  to  the 
burden  saddled  upon  improved  land. 

In  his  message  to  Congress,  cabled  from 
Paris,  President  Wilson  said  these  things: 
"There  is  now  in  fact  a  real  community  of 
interest  between  capital  and  labor,  but  it  has 
never  been  made  evident  in  action.  It  can 
be  made  operative  and  manifest  only  in  a 
new  organization  of  industry.  The  genius 
of  our  business  men  and  the  sound  practical 
sense  of  our  workers  can  certainly  work  such 
a  partnership  out  when  once  they  realize 
exactly  what  it  is  they  seek,  and  sincerely 
adopt  a  common  purpose  with  regard  to  it. 
.  .  .  But  the  new  spirit  and  method  of 
organization  which  must  be  effected  are 
not  to  be  brought  about  by  legislation  so 
much  as  by  the  common  counsel  and  volun- 
[  80  ] 


THE  HOUSING  QUESTION 

tary  co-operation  of  capitalist,  manager  and 
workman.  .  .  .  Those  who  really  desire  a 
new  relationship  between  capital  and  labor 
can  readily  find  a  way  to  bring  it  about;  and 
perhaps  federal  legislation  can  help  more 
than  state  legislation  could." 

If  these  words  of  the  President  seem  to 
shed  much  light  on  the  questions  at  issue, 
they  who  see  should  be  grateful  for  the  il- 
lumination. To  be  sure,  the  President  does 
in  other  paragraphs  refer  to  some  of  the 
agencies  through  which  he  thinks  this  new 
community  of  interest  may  be  brought  into 
being  but  his  references  are  in  the  main  to 
those  agencies  already  in  existence,  and 
which,  however  much  they  have  accom- 
plished, can  in  no  way  prevail.  A  more  pow- 
erful agency  than  they  stands  between  the 
dream  and  the  reality.  Between  capital 
which  seeks  a  fair  profit,  and  workmen  who 
seek  a  fair  wage,  stands  the  rising  cost  prob- 
lem. The  manufacturer  has  his  rising  cost 
of  production.  The  workman  has  his  rising 
cost  of  living.  Round  and  round  they  chase 
each  other  in  a  vicious  circle,  while  the 
owners  of  land  plunge  their  hands  first  into 
the  pockets  of  one  and  then  into  the  pockets 
of  the  other.  These  land  owners  may,  and 
generally  do,  belong  to  the  possessing  class, 
[81  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

and  often  to  the  manufacturers  themselves, 
but  the  class  makes  no  difference.  Wher- 
ever men  turn,  to  work,  to  live,  to  play,  up 
goes  the  cost  of  doing  either,  and  still  the 
pious-minded  point  out  the  "community  of 
interest,"  without  ever  touching  upon  the 
basic  nature  of  that  gentle  platitude.  Pres- 
ident Wilson  could  render  no  greater  ser- 
vice to  his  country  than  by  explaining  what 
he  means  by  "community  of  interest,"  and 
then  by  telling  us  how  to  make  it  both  vivid 
to  all  and  attainable  by  all. 

Suppose,  that  just  by  way  of  change, 
that  very  elusive  "community  of  interest" 
should  be  captured,  confined,  studied  and  at 
last  recognized  as  the  combined  effort  of 
employer  and  laborer  to  put  an  end  to  the 
process  of  rifling  their  pockets!  Suppose 
that  by  way  of  setting  about  the  attainment 
of  cost  reduction  in  production,  and  that  bet- 
ter share  for  labor,  a  way  was  found  to  elimi- 
nate the  watered  stock  and  the  slyly  stolen 
dividends  filched  from  both  capital  and 
labor. 

The  Mayor  of  Seattle,  in  an  address  de- 
livered at  the  convention  of  the  National 
Manufacturers'  Association  in  New  York 
City  on  May  21,  1919,  said:  "Labor  must  be 
satisfied,  must  have  good  living  conditions, 
and  must  receive  the  highest  possible  re- 
[  82  ] 


THE  HOUSING  QUESTION 

numeration."  One  may  be  excused  for  sus- 
pecting that  these  words  are  more  in  the  na- 
ture of  a  bid  for  the  labor  vote  than  they  are 
an  intelligent  exposition  of  the  problem  be- 
fore American  industry.  That  problem  is 
the  increase  of  production,  the  decrease  of 
production  cost  and  a  fixed  higher  wage  for 
workers.  How  can  workers  secure  "the 
highest  possible  remuneration,"  when  a  part 
of  that  remuneration  is  continually  being  di- 
verted from  them  by  those  who  are  able  to 
capitalize  every  human  effort  into  increased 
charges  for  the  use  of  the  land  on  which  they 
work,  on  which  they  live,  and  on  which  they 
play  (if  they  get  the  chance).  But  the 
Mayor  of  Seattle  is  an  orator,  not  an 
economist. 

This  is  where  the  housing  problem  begins 
and  ends.  All  efforts  to  solve  it  with  tene- 
ment house  laws,  municipal  credits,  Govern- 
ment loans,  cheap  forms  of  construction,  or 
wholesale  building  operations,  recoil  de- 
feated and  checked  before  the  fact  that 
wherever  men  go,  whatever  they  essay  to  do, 
the  owners  of  land  immediately  capitalize 
their  wants  or  desires  or  intentions  into  a 
charge  upon  the  use  of  land.  This  process 
cannot  go  on  much  longer  without  bringing 
dangerous  and  even  revolutionary  conse- 
quences. 

[  83  ] 


V 
THE  TWO  PLANTS 

LET  us  try  to  state  the  house  problem  in 
yet  simpler  terms.  Let  us  try  to  show 
its  real  relation  to  what  manufac- 
turers call  their  plant.  Now,  plant  is  a 
word  that  covers  a  good  deal.  It  means 
first  of  all  land;  then  buildings,  ma- 
chinery, and  equipment  of  all  kinds.  The 
manufacturer  thinks  of  his  plant  in  such 
terms,  and  he  thinks  that  his  plant  is 
limited  by  the  land  and  buildings  he 
occupies.  He  does  not  think  that  he  has  any 
direct  interest  in  the  great  plant  outside  his 
walls  or  gates.  He  may  think  so,  perhaps, 
if  he  owns  land  or  buildings  from  which  he 
derives  a  rental,  or  he  may  think  so  if  the 
town  proposes  to  spend  a  lot  of  money  for 
improvements  and  thus  raise  the  taxes. 
Then,  vaguely,  he  feels  the  connection  be- 
tween the  general  plant  outside  his  walls, 
and  his  own  particular  plant  that  is  within 
those  walls. 

But  until  such  an  occasion  arises  and  there 
[  84  ] 


THE  TWO  PLANTS 

is  a  plain  and  direct  interference  with  his 
profits,  the  manufacturer  does  not  think  of 
the  word  plant  as  embracing  anything  be- 
side his  own  manufacturing  property.  But 
just  as  the  manufacturer  has  to  have  build- 
ings and  machinery,  so  does  he  have  to  have 
workers.  The  workers,  in  their  turn,  have 
to  have  another  plant  quite  outside  the  plant 
in  which  they  work.  They  have  to  have  a 
plant  where  they  may  live,  rear  families,  get 
some  amusement,  and  a  little  enjoyment  out 
of  life.  They,  in  their  turn,  do  not  feel  the 
connection  between  this  plant  of  theirs, 
which  is  represented  by  houses,  streets,  back- 
yards, refuse  heaps,  stores,  "movies," 
churches,  street  railways,  telegraph  poles, 
bill-boards,  and  the  like,  to  the  plant  in  which 
they  work,  and  the  economic  system  of  which 
they  are  a  part.  They  do  not  understand 
that  the  cost  of  supporting  both  the  plant  in 
which  they  live  and  the  plant  in  which  they 
work,  has  to  be  paid  out  of  their  pockets.  It 
has  to  be  paid  with  money,  it  is  true,  and  the 
only  way  they  can  get  any  money  is  by  work- 
ing for  it.  But  the  workman,  when  he  is  con- 
fronted with  a  demand  upon  him  for  more 
money  as  a  payment  for  his  right  to  occupy 
the  plant  where  he  lives,  for  the  food  he  eats, 
the  clothes  he  wears,  does  not  understand 
[85  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

where  the  extra  payment  goes.  Somehow  or 
other,  he  feels  that  things  have  gone  up, 
that's  all.  "Gone  up"  represents  a  pretty 
regular  condition,  and  he  knows  that  the 
only  remedy  is  for  his  wages  to  go  up  like- 
wise. 

But  when  the  manufacturer  receives  the 
demand  for  higher  wages,  he,  too,  fails  to 
realize  that  they  are  asked  for  because  the 
cost  of  operating  the  plant  outside  his  works 
has  gone  up.  He  still  does  not  see  the  con- 
nection between  the  two  plants.  He  still 
fails  to  realize  that  the  other  plant  is  in  re- 
ality a  part  of  his  plant,  that  he  is  just  as 
much  affected  by  what  happens  to  it  as  he 
is  affected  by  what  happens  to  his  own  plant. 
He  still  fails  to  perceive  that  the  cost  of 
carrying  on  the  plant  where  his  workers  live 
has  gone  up  because  the  non-producers,  in 
the  shape  of  land-owners,  have  again  slipped 
their  hands  into  the  pockets  of  his  workmen. 
They  have  arranged  to  charge  a  little  more 
for  the  privilege  of  living  on  the  land,  and 
of  doing  business  on  the  land.  In  other 
words,  they  are  watering  the  stock  of  the 
manufacturer's  plant  by  making  it  cost  more 
for  people  to  live.  You  cannot  tear  the  two 
plants  apart  —  only  most  manufacturers  do 
not  yet  realize  it. 

[  86  ] 


THE  TWO  PLANTS 

These  things  do  not  happen  to  all,  but 
scarcely  an  employer  of  any  size  has  failed 
to  pass  through  the  experience.  As  a  whole, 
manufacturing,  including  industry  of  all 
kinds  and  agriculture  as  well,  has  had  a 
steadily  increasing  tribute  wrung  from  it, 
without  ever  suspecting  how  it  was  done, 
ever  since  the  country  began  to  have  any 
agriculture  or  any  industry.  This,  again,  is 
the  real  meaning  of  the  housing  problem. 
It  means  that  houses  are  a  part  of  the  manu- 
facturer's plant.  It  means  that  they  are  an 
indispensable  part  of  our  national  plant  and 
industrial  life.  It  means  that  just  as  they 
are  given  over  to  speculation,  that  just  as 
every  fresh  building  operation  is  used  to  in- 
crease the  cost  of  unimproved  land,  that  just 
as  a  housing  shortage  is  used  to  raise  rents, 
that  just  as  every  town  or  municipal  under- 
taking is  the  signal  for  building  site  values  to 
be  raised,  that  just  as  the  men  who  own  land 
and  produce  absolutely  nothing  and  render 
no  service  of  any  kind  are  allowed  to  demand 
and  collect  a  continually  increasing  dividend 
from  those  who  invest  their  capital  in  in- 
dustry and  those  who  sell  their  labor  in  in- 
dustry, then  just  so  long  is  there  no  possible 
way  of  solving  the  housing  problem,  nor,  by 
the  same  token,  is  there  any  way  of  ever 
[  87  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

paying  a  higher  wage,  a  wage  that  will  buy 
more  things  not  only  now,  but  five  years 
from  now,  or  twenty  years  in  the  future. 
That  is  the  amazing  fact  which  stares  us  in 
the  face.  For,  how  can  we  ever  pay  a  higher 
wage,  when  someone  who  never  works  comes 
along  and  demands  every  cent  of  the  in- 
crease, sooner  or  later.  That  is  just  what 
happens.  If  a  workman  is  receiving  $15.00 
a  week,  and  he  gets  a  raise  to  $16.00,  of  what 
avail  is  the  raise  when  the  dollar  advance  he 
secures,  and  generally  a  few  cents  more 
along  with  it,  are  sniped  away  from  him  by 
an  increased  cost  of  living?  And  for  what 
is  the  increase  demanded?  When  science 
and  mechanics  both  have  steadily  operated 
to  increase  the  amount  of  any  one  thing  that 
an  individual  can  produce,  whether  it  be 
automobiles  or  onions,  why  do  those  things 
keep  on  costing  more  and  more? 

Does  it  not  seem  strange  that  intelligent 
business  men  will  not  see  where  the  trouble 
lies?  It  may  not  seem  so  strange  that  work- 
ing men  do  not  see,  and  that  they  are  con- 
tinually striving  for  a  higher  wage  and 
shorter  hours.  Their  leaders  do  not  see.  We 
have  very  few  real  economists  among  the 
ranks  of  our  labor  leaders,  —  very  few,  in- 
deed. It  is  our  misfortune  to  have  few  such 
[  88  ] 


THE  TWO  PLANTS 

leaders  as  there  are  in  England,  where  it  is 
not  easy  to  find  a  manufacturer  who  is  as 
well  grounded  in  the  science  of  economics  as 
are  some  of  the  men  who  lead  the  workers. 
There,  it  is  evident  that  the  truth  has  been 
seen.  Here,  it  is  palpable  that  the  truth,  if 
it  has  been  seen,  is  carefully  shrouded  in  a 
mask  of  platitudes,  such  as  "community  of 
interest,"  "public  service,"  "a  better  world," 
"a  fairer  share,"  "full  dinner  pail,"  and  the 
like.  All  of  these  things  mean  nothing  and 
the  people  who  utter  them  can  neither  trans- 
late them  into  understandable  words,  nor 
can  they  point  the  way  to  any  realization  of 
the  vague  moralities  they  think  they  have  in 
mind.  The  plain  fact  is,  that  as  long  as  the 
cost  of  living  on  the  surface  of  the  earth  is 
raised  faster  than  the  profits  from  produc- 
tion can  earn  that  extra  cost,  there  is  no  way 
of  paying  a  higher  wage.  It  cannot  be  done, 
and  those  who  seek  some  way  of  doing  it  by 
setting  up  all  kinds  of  instruments  for  work- 
men's committees,  shop  committees,  concilia- 
tion boards,  and  such  like,  are  bringing  us 
no  nearer  to  a  solution  of  the  difficulty. 

It  is  true  that  organized  labor  has  secured 
higher    wages    for    a    small    minority    of 
workers,  but  this  has  only  been  done  by  per- 
mitting the  manufacturer,   who   paid  the 
[  89  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

higher  wage,  to  charge  it  back  on  his  prod- 
ucts. Thus  the  higher  wage  so  paid  was 
paid,  in  reality,  by  the  general  consumer,  in 
the  form  of  an  increased  cost  of  living.  But, 
when  all  workers,  whether  of  hand  or  brain, 
organize  to  secure  a  higher  wage,  as  they 
have  been  doing  more  and  more  of  late,  the 
system  bursts.  It  cannot  stand  up.  It  is 
built  on  a  rotten  foundation,  and  no  effort  to 
patch  it  will  avail  for  long.  There  must  be 
a  new  foundation  —  a  new  and  fairer 
method  of  dividing  the  profits  of  industry, 
—  and  of  eliminating  the  sly  thieving  of  the 
non-producer. 

The  statement  of  the  Miners'  Federation 
of  England,  when  it  made  its  now  famous 
demand  for  "a  30%  increase  in  wages,  a  40- 
hour  week,  and  nationalization  of  the  mines," 
indicates  the  economic  progress  which  the 
workers  of  England  have  made.  "This  is 
not  a  demand  to  secure  for  us  and  our  fam- 
ilies a  decent  living  condition  and  a  relief 
from  the  intolerable  privations  and  hardships 
which  we  have  had  to  bear,"  said  the  miners. 
"We  know  very  well  that  we  might  negoti- 
ate with  our  present  employers  and  get  a 
higher  wage  and  a  shorter  week,  but  we  also 
know  perfectly  well  that  whatever  increase 
we  obtained  in  our  wages,  would  be  added  to 
[  90  ] 


THE  TWO  PLANTS 

the  cost  of  coal.  In  turn,  that  added  cost  of 
coal  would  be  added  by  all  the  other  manu- 
facturers who  make  the  things  we  need,  and 
so,  in  a  very  short  while,  our  increased  wages 
would  buy  us  no  more  than  our  present  wage 
will  buy,  and  probably  a  little  less.  We  know 
this  from  long  experience.  Therefore,  we 
ask  for  nationalization  of  the  mines.  We  be- 
lieve that  if  the  mines  were  operated  in  the 
interest  of  the  country  as  a  whole,  if  compe- 
tition were  suppressed,  if  distribution  were 
arranged  along  natural  lines,  and  if  the  right 
labor-saving  machinery  were  introduced, 
there  could  be  saved  enough  in  the  mining 
and  distribution  of  coal  to  more  than  pay 
the  wage  increase  we  ask.  Then  we  would 
have  secured  a  real  wage  raise,  for  there 
would  be  no  increase  in  the  cost  of  coal.  We 
could  preserve  the  increase  we  had  won, 
because  others  would  not  raise  their  prices, 
and  we  could  buy  more  with  our  wage,  and 
continue  to  buy  more  with  it." 

This  is  all  so  simple  that  it  seems  scarcely 
necessary  to  add  more.  Of  course  it  is  true 
that  in  actual  fact  the  miners  wage  increase 
would  slowly  lose  some  of  its  added  purchas- 
ing power  unless  other  industries  were  put 
on  the  same  basis.  Coal,  though  a  big  factor 
in  industry,  is  not  the  only  item,  and  before 
[  91  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

there  can  be  any  real  raise  in  wages  such  as 
will  actually  give  and  preserve  to  the  worker 
an  increased  purchasing  power,  some  way 
must  be  found  to  tie  the  hands  of  the  non- 
producers  who  are  today  well  entrenched  in 
all  lands,  and  who  have  the  right  by  law,  the 
sanction  by  tradition,  the  power  by  occu- 
pancy and  possession,  to  keep  on  adding  an 
increased  charge  for  the  use  of  land. 

No  assertion  is  made  that  the  increments 
on  land  are  the  only  unearned  increments; 
but  the  others  are  small  in  comparison,  al- 
though quite  aside  from  those  which  may  re- 
sult from  cornered  markets,  failure  of  crops, 
secret  price  cutting,  and  other  similar  de- 
vices, there  are  also  the  huge  increments 
from  natural  resources  lying  below  the  sur- 
face of  the  earth.  During  the  month  of 
May,  1919,  in  England,  when  the  Coal  Com- 
mission was  taking  testimony  in  order  to  de- 
termine how  the  coal  mines  of  England 
should  be  operated  in  the  future  (its  pre- 
vious report  having  utterly  condemned  the 
system  of  the  past)  it  was  made  clear  that 
the  Marquis  of  Bute,  for  example,  held 
128,528  acres  of  land,  of  which  48,878  acres 
carried  proved  mineral  rights,  and  from 
which  the  annual  royalties  on  coal  mined 
were  about  $575,000.  Under  examination 
[  92  ] 


THE  TWO  PLANTS 

it  was  also  pointed  out  that  King  Edward 
VI  was  between  10  and  14  years  of  age  when 
he  signed  the  document  under  which  there 
was  conferred  upon  Sir  William  Herbert, 
himself  an  executor  of  the  will  of  Henry 
VIII,  the  huge  grant  of  land  in  question. 
"Do  you  know,"  said  Mr.  Hodges  to  the 
Marquis  of  Bute,  "it  has  been  suggested  that 
Sir  William  Herbert  granted  the  lands  to 
himself,  using  the  boy  king's  name  in  order 
to  enrich  himself,  and  that  he  was  charged 
with  equal  rapacity  in  regard  to  large  areas 
in  other  parts  of  England,  with  the  result 
that  literally  millions  of  money  has  been  paid 
in  revenue  to  those  who  have  inherited  that 
property  as  the  outcome  of  'that  gigantic 
fraud?'  " 

Other  tremendous  holdings,  with  corre- 
spondingly tremendous  revenues  were  re- 
vealed, but  they  are  mentioned  here  only  in 
connection  with  the  problem  of  unearned  in- 
crements and  their  relation  to  wage  increases 
and  housing.  In  respect  to  the  latter,  the 
housing  conditions  in  the  mining  centers  of 
the  world  are  too  well  known  to  require 
comment.  The  lives  of  the  men  below 
ground,  under  conditions  that  would  appall 
the  stoutest  heart,  were  it  not  beating  in  the 
breast  of  a  race  that  has  been  forced  to  ac- 
[93] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

cept  these  conditions  as  the  price  of  its  exist- 
ence, are  in  no  sense  less  pleasurable  than 
the  lives  of  the  wives  and  children  who  in- 
habit the  slums  made  necessary  through  the 
pilfering  of  their  wage  by  the  non-pro- 
ducers. It  is  not  for  nothing  that  the  miners 
of  England  have  been  studying  their  prob- 
lem as  one  of  applied  economics,  and  not  as 
one  that  revolved  about  a  senseless  struggle 
for  the  higher  wage  that  has  been  discovered 
to  be  a  mirage  —  a  rainbow,  with  no  pot  of 
gold  at  its  end,  but  only  the  barren  result 
of  a  futile  struggle. 

Everywhere,  throughout  the  world,  where 
Governments  have  struggled  with  the  hous- 
ing problem,  they  have  gradually  come  to 
see  that  there  was  no  solution  until  some  way 
of  land  control  could  be  devised.  In  Queens- 
land, for  example,  Mr.  Ryan  testifying  be- 
fore the  Coal  Commission  of  England  in 
May,  1919,  with  respect  to  the  state  opera- 
tion of  mines  in  that  province  of  Australia, 
stated  that  the  land  owned  by  the  State 
could  no  longer  be  sold  to  an  individual.  It 
may  only  be  leased,  the  Crown  retaining  the 
title,  and  thereby  enjoying  the  benefit  that 
may  accrue  through  any  increases  in  value. 

In  other  parts  of  Australia,  and  in  New 
Zealand,  the  State  owns  large  areas  of  land 
that  cannot  be  diverted  to  private  holders. 
[  94  ] 


THE  TWO  PLANTS 

The  operation  of  the  housing  law  is  so 
simple  in  New  Zealand  that  any  workman  of 
good  character  can  make  an  application  at 
any  post-office  for  a  loan  with  which  to  build 
a  house.  He  pays  less  than  two  dollars  on 
filing  the  application,  and  that  is  the  only 
fee  he  has  to  pay.  If  he  is  adjudged  a 
worthy  risk,  the  State  makes  the  loan  at  low 
interest.  If  he  has  no  land,  the  State  will 
rent  him  land,  and,  in  some  areas,  will  sell  it 
to  him. 

On  this  point  it  again  should  be  made  clear 
that  there  is  no  way  of  preventing  the  use 
value  of  land  from  rising.  Neither  is  it 
harmful  that  it  should  rise.  Wherever  men 
congregate,  more  business  is  to  be  done. 
The  more  business  that  can  be  transacted 
on  a  given  piece  of  land,  the  more  the  user  of 
that  land  can  afford  to  pay  for  its  use.  The 
harm  lies  in  the  collection  of  the  charge  by 
an  individual,  who  does  nothing,  produces 
nothing,  adds  nothing,  but  who  by  sheer 
right  of  possession  is  entitled  to  collect  a 
use  charge  for  that  land,  and  to  raise  that 
use  charge  just  as  fast  and  just  as  high  as 
the  traffic  will  bear.  The  problem  before 
the  world  is  to  change  this  system.  It  lies  at 
the  bottom  of  most  of  the  social  and  eco- 
nomic problems  with  which  men  are  contin- 
ually wrestling. 

[  95  ] 


VI 

WHAT  ARE  THE  POSSIBLE 

WAYS  OUT  OF  THE 

DILEMMA  IN 

HOUSING? 

AT  THIS  moment,  all  over  the  United 
States,  amateur  financiers  and  hous- 
ing reformers  are  clamoring  for  Gov- 
ernment aid  in  housing.  Many  towns  and 
cities  have  allowed  themselves  to  drift  into 
such  a  state  that  they  can  see  no  way  out  of 
the  situation.  Money  is  not  available  for 
housing,  because  building  costs  are  high,  the 
future  is  uncertain,  and  even  with  a  strong 
demand  for  housing  and  the  possibility  of 
high  rents,  private  capital  is  still  reluctant 
to  make  the  venture.  Institutions  that  com- 
monly lend  money  on  this  kind  of  enterprise 
appear  to  be  equally  loath  to  part  with  their 
funds.  The  real  answer  probably  lies  in  the 
fact  that  there  has  come  to  be  a  very  general 
understanding  of  the  fact  that  without  an 
inflation  of  rental  values  such  as  would  be 
[  96  ] 


THE   DILEMMA  IN  HOUSING 

extortionate,  there  is  now  no  way  known 
by  which  good  houses  can  be  built  to  rent 
for  a  small  sum  and  pay  a  profit  on  the  in- 
vestment. When  all  is  said  and  done,  this 
is  the  secret  that  has  finally  wormed  its  way 
out.  England  discovered  it  a  long  time  ago, 
and  as  has  already  been  explained,  prefers 
to  subsidize  the  building  of  houses  rather 
than  run  the  risk  of  popular  upheaval,  if  the 
houses  are  not  provided,  or  if  speculators 
are  allowed  to  take  control  of  the  situation 
and  try  to  put  the  workers  of  England  back 
into  the  old  slums  from  which  so  many  of 
them  came  forth  to  fight  in  the  war,  or  into 
new  slums  to  be  built  cheaply  and  rented  at 
high  rates. 

But  in  view  of  the  fact  that  land  in  our 
cities  has  reached  a  figure,  for  house  build- 
ing sites,  such  as  is  prohibitive  for  houses 
for  low-wage  or  low-salary  workers,  what 
can  be  done? 

One  suggested  way,  as  has  been  said,  is 
for  the  State  to  advance  sums  of  money  at 
low  rates  of  interest.  The  experience  of 
other  countries  is  pointed  out,  in  that  con- 
nection, but  those  who  point  it  out  do  not 
allude  to  the  whole  of  the  experience.  They 
make  out  a  case  for  Government  loans, 
which  can  easily  be  done,  but  unless  such 
[  97  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

loans  are  accompanied  with  intelligent  legis- 
lation providing  for  land  control,  the  money 
lent  by  the  Government  (Federal,  State  or 
Municipal)  merely  serves  to  alleviate  the 
temporary  condition.  In  the  end,  the  vicious 
circle  is  travelled  with  a  rise  in  land  values 
to  complete  it  and  thus  block  further 
progress.  But  a  temporary  alleviation 
may  be  necessary.  It  may  be  absolutely  im- 
perative, in  which  case  little  can  be  done 
except  to  satisfy  the  immediate  need  for 
houses. 

But  even  in  so  doing,  the  State  should 
look  ahead  and  see  what  the  result  is  likely  to 
be.  Take  New  York  City,  for  example. 
Suppose  that  it  were  provided  with  any- 
where from  $10,000,000  to  $20,000,000  at 
low  rate  of  interest,  which  could  be  used  to 
build  houses.  Even  to  achieve  any  tempo- 
rary benefit,  it  would  be  necessary  to  find 
cheap  land,  to  begin  with,  and  it  is  by  no 
means  certain  that  even  on  cheap  land  it 
would  be  possible  to  build  houses  or  apart- 
ments, within  the  rental  reach  of  thousands 
of  the  workers  of  New  York  City.  It  is 
almost  certain  that  if  decent  houses  were 
built,  with  anything  approaching  a  fair 
measure  of  light,  air,  and  convenience,  that 
somebody  would  lose  money  on  the  trans- 
[  98  ] 


THE   DILEMMA  IN   HOUSING 

action.  Our  situation  is  no  better  than  Eng- 
land's. We  are  in  the  same  boat,  as  far  as 
house-building  is  concerned. 

If  the  State  would  agree  to  write  off  any 
loss,  as  represented  by  the  difference  be- 
tween the  cost  of  the  houses  as  built  today 
and  their  value  in  five  years  under  the  then 
existing  conditions,  very  likely  there  would 
be  a  rush  to  use  the  State's  funds.  The  City 
of  New  York  might  make  such  an  agree- 
ment, as  a  last  resort.  Other  cities  may  be 
driven  to  it  before  we  are  out  of  the  present 
dilemma,  for  every  city  of  any  size  in  the 
United  States  is  in  about  the  same  predica- 
ment, and  the  shortage  of  houses  is  national 
in  scope. 

We  have  thousands  of  houses  that  ought 
to  be  scrapped,  immediately,  as  unfit  for 
human  habitation.  We  are  under-built,  in 
houses,  as  a  result  of  the  building  decline 
previous  to  and  during  the  war.  In  some 
cases,  local  conditions  are  more  favorable 
than  in  others,  and  then  it  is  possible  to 
stimulate  house-building.  In  other  places, 
it  is  impossible  to  stimulate  such  building, 
except  by  organized  effort.  As  it  is  always 
doubtful  whether  money  can  be  secured  from 
the  State,  even  after  long  delay,  then  it  is 
sometimes  proposed  that  wealthy  men 
[99  ] 


THE   JOKE   ABOUT   HOUSING 

should  form  a  syndicate  to  provide  the 
funds.  But  here  again,  there  is  a  failure  to 
recognize  the  fact  that  such  action  will  pro- 
vide only  a  temporary  relief,  and  a  short- 
lived one  at  that,  although  a  private  syndi- 
cate might  exercise  a  more  beneficial  result 
than  the  State,  for  it  could  engage  upon  a 
transaction  on  a  very  large  scale,  if  it  were 
so  minded,  without  waiting  for  the  enact- 
ment of  legislation. 

Suppose,  for  example,  that  the  City  of 
New  York  could  acquire  all  the  vacant  land 
within  its  area.  The  City  of  New  York  is 
used  by  way  of  illustration  only;  the  ex- 
ample in  mind  is  practicable  for  every  city, 
if  it  has  or  can  obtain  the  power  to  buy  and 
hold  for  business  or  residential  purposes. 
But  if  New  York  City  could  do  such  a  thing, 
then  it  could  perhaps  extricate  itself  from 
its  present  situation.  Naturally,  it  would 
have  to  acquire  the  land  at  a  fair  valuation 
and  not  at  an  inflated  price,  but  the  interest 
charge  for  carrying  it  would  be  more  than 
paid  by  the  rise  in  value  of  the  land.  The 
rise  for  residential  purposes  ought  to  be  very 
little;  the  rise  for  business  purposes  would 
be  sure  and  steady,  and  the  extra  amount 
produced  by  the  rental  of  such  land  would 
carry  the  financial  burden  of  whatever  loan 
[  100  ] 


THE   DILEMMA  IN   HOUSING 

was  necessary  in  order  to  make  the  original 
purchase. 

Then  the  City  of  New  York  would  have 
absolute  control  of  the  housing  problem 
within  its  own  area.  That  would  not  be 
enough,  eventually,  and  a  logical  law  would 
permit  the  acquisition  of  land  outside  the 
city  area,  as  well.  If  such  land  can  be  taken 
for  the  purpose  of  a  water  supply  or  a  sew- 
age plant,  there  would  seem  to  be  no  valid 
reason  why  it  could  not  be  taken  for  con- 
serving humans.  By  such  a  process,  it  might 
soon  be  apparent  that  the  expenditures  for 
jails,  hospitals,  sanitariums  and  such  make- 
shift arrangements  were  decreasing,  and 
that  the  City  of  New  York  and  the  State  of 
New  York  had  really  started  a  movement 
that  was  business-like  in  the  last  degree.  In- 
stead of  plunging  themselves  deeper  and 
deeper  in  debt  every  year,  in  providing  for 
the  human  by-products  of  their  slums,  they 
would  use  the  money  to  stop  the  increasing 
flow  of  such  by-products.  Today,  millions 
go  for  the  broken,  diseased  and  cast-off;  but 
only  a  very  little  goes  to  decreasing  the  num- 
ber of  these.  But  with  the  increased  value  of 
land  flowing  back  into  the  treasury  of  the 
city  or  the  State,  the  housing  problem  would 
be  ended  forever.  It  will  never  be  ended, 
[  101  ] 


THE   JOKE   ABOUT   HOUSING 

but  will  grow  steadily  worse,  until  the  use 
value  of  land  is  given  back  to  those  who 
create  it. 

But  it  is  beyond  the  dreams  of  the  most 
visionary  idealist  that  the  City  of  New  York 
will  do  such  a  thing,  or  that  the  State  of  New 
York  would  either  do  it  itself  or  allow  the 
city  to  do  it.  That  is  the  reason  why  it 
might  be  possible  for  a  group  of  wealthy  in- 
terests to  do  what  the  State  cannot  or  will 
not  do,  but  what  must  be  done  by  somebody. 
If  it  sounds  like  a  Bold  step,  then  it  may  be 
well  to  remember  that  there  are  many  Bold 
things  that  begin  with  a  B,  only  some  of 
them  are  bad.  We  do  not  wish  to  settle  the 
housing  problem,  and  others,  by  the  bad 
method,  if  it  can  be  avoided.  But  the  solu- 
tion must  be  based  upon  a  clear  understand- 
ing of  the  economics  of  land  use  and  tenure, 
and  if  a  group  of  interests  could  be  given 
such  an  understanding  and  could  see  the  wis- 
dom of  trying  to  forestall  any  such  condition 
as  now  throttles  Europe,  they  could  acquire 
vast  areas  of  land,  on  the  agreement  that  the 
returns  to  themselves  or  the  corporation  they 
formed  should  in  no  case  be  more  than  5%. 
The  new  English  Housing  Bill  does  provide 
that  such  groups  may  limit  their  dividends 
to  not  more  than  6%,  but  the  less  the  divi- 
[  102  ] 


THE   DILEMMA  IN   HOUSING 

dend  the  better  the  result  in  the  long  run, 
although  it  is  not  a  point  about  which  to 
quibble. 

Such  a  corporation  would  aim  at  two 
things:  To  preserve  the  value  of  building 
sites  as  near  a  non-fluctuating  basis  as  pos- 
sible, and  to  make  the  use  value  of  land 
wanted  for  business  purposes  help  pay  the 
taxes  and  the  cost  of  the  annual  interest 
charge  for  carrying  the  land.  Its  members 
would  be  rendering  a  service  to  their  city 
the  value  of  which  is  beyond  calculation. 
They  would  perhaps  be  able  to  save  it  from 
a  graver  peril  than  that  which  now  con- 
fronts it,  for  it  is  certain  that  if  our  cities 
become  so  top-heavy  and  unworkable  that 
the  cost  of  living  and  doing  business  there  in- 
creases at  a  greater  proportionate  rate  than 
elsewhere,  such  cities  will  cease  to  grow. 

There  can  be  no  gainsaying  the  fact  that 
it  would  be  to  the  interest  of  the  whole 
country  if  our  cities  did  cease  to  grow 
as  they  are  at  present  growing.  We  do  not 
want  larger  cities,  but  better  cities,  and  bet- 
ter cities  we  shall  undoubtedly  get,  in  some 
manner.  But  the  process  of  stopping  fur- 
ther centralization  and  of  setting  up  decen- 
tralization ought  to  be  a  gradual  one.  There 
should  be  time  for  readjustments,  and  no 
[  103  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

violent  upsetting  of  many  things  that  can- 
not be  changed  except  gradually. 

But  inasmuch  as  it  is  very  probable  that 
no  group  of  financial  interests  will  care  to 
engage  upon  such  a  transaction,  foregoing 
the  rich  profits  from  the  rise  in  land  values, 
—  profits  which  are  so  traditionally  accepted 
as  the  most  luscious  and  juicy  of  all  —  what 
is  the  next  thing  to  be  done?  Take  some  of 
the  population  out  of  New  York  City,  of 
course ! 

Already,  there  are  manufacturers  and 
groups  of  manufacturers  in  New  York  City 
and  in  other  large  cities,  who  are  asking 
themselves  whether  that  is  not  the  answer. 

In  England,  one  huge  industry  is  already 
at  work  upon  plans  for  the  establishment  of 
six  new  plants  removed  from  existing  large 
industrial  centers.  The  management  have 
seen  that  only  by  an  entirely  new  conception 
of  industry,  can  their  business  be  assured  of 
permanence.  Their  intention  is  to  build 
several  complete  plants,  including  the  towns, 
which  will  be  operated  not  by  the  manufac- 
turers, but  by  the  tenants. 

The  manufacturer  simply  lends  the  money 

with  which  to  buy  the  land  and  build  the 

town,  taking  only  a  nominal  rate  of  interest 

for  his  loan.     The  tenants,  paying  back  the 

[  104  ] 


THE   DILEMMA  IN  HOUSING 

loan  as  fast  as  they  can,  become  the  ultimate 
communal  owners  of  the  underlying  land 
on  which  the  town  is  built.  In  some  cases 
the  loan  for  the  land  is  financed  separately 
from  the  loans  for  building.  There  are 
many  variations  of  plan,  as  to  finance  and 
administration,  but  they  are  all  based  upon 
the  principle  of  securing  the  rise  in  the  use 
value  of  land  for  those  who  create  it,  as  is 
now  the  case  in  the  Garden  Cities  and  the 
Co-partnership  Tenants  undertakings. 

What  does  this  mean?  It  means  that  it 
will  be  very  difficult  for  any  outside  interest 
to  be  watering  the  capital  stock  of  the  man- 
ufacturers. It  means  that  they  will  have 
established  a  living  plant  for  their  workers 
where  values  will  be  highly  stabilized,  which 
means  in  turn,  that  wages  will  be  highly 
stabilized.  It  means  that  by  the  application 
of  engineering  and  architectural  skill,  these 
communities  will  be  the  most  pleasant  and 
enjoyable  to  be  found  anywhere  in  England. 
They  will  have  central  heat  from  the  works 
plant,  and  central  hot-water  distribution 
likewise.  They  will  have  all  the  conven- 
iences that  go  with  the  best  kind  of  modern 
apartment,  and  will  have  a  garden  as  well, 
with  open  space  for  the  children  and  the 
boys  and  girls,  and  even  for  the  fathers  and 
[  105  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

mothers,  on  evenings  and  holidays.  The 
communities  will  in  no  sense  be  paternalistic, 
and  nobody  in  them  will  own  any  land  or 
any  house.  Yet  the  right  to  live  there  will 
be  conferred,  as  long  as  one  pays  the  annual 
rental  and  behaves  in  a  decent  and  orderly 
manner.  No  one  can  make  any  money  out 
of  land  speculation,  and  at  the  same  time,  no 
one  can  lose  any.  Rents,  instead  of  being 
raised,  will  likely  be  lowered. 

Why  are  not  the  manufacturers  in  all 
parts  of  the  United  States  alive  to  the  bene- 
fits to  be  derived  from  this  kind  of  a  plant, 
where  the  non-producers  are  largely  extin- 
guished and  where  the  process  of  production 
earns  a  profit  which  can  be  divided  between 
employer  and  employee,  without  having  a 
toll  taken  away  from  it  by  the  land-sniping 
process  ?  That  is  the  answer  that  many  man- 
ufacturers in  New  York  can  make  to  the 
housing  problem.  It  is  the  answer  that  many 
of  them  will  have  to  make,  in  the  future,  for 
the  cost  of  doing  business  in  New  York  City 
is  not  going  to  decline  —  at  least  not  until 
there  is  a  complete  reorganization  of  taxa- 
tion and  land  tenure,  and  until  a  more  rigor- 
ous zoning  law  takes  the  place  of  the  pres- 
ent compromise  made  in  the  interest  of  realty 
interests.  It  is  true  that  the  present  zoning 
[  106  ] 


THE   DILEMMA  IN   HOUSING 

law  does  aim  at  decreasing  land  speculation 
and  the  disasters  that  follow,  by  restricting 
the  purposes  for  which  land  may  be  used  or 
occupied,  but  what  is  needed  is  a  new  zoning 
law  based  upon  something  else  beside  the 
giving  away  of  land  values ;  until  such  a  law 
is  enacted  no  great  change  is  possible,  either 
in  housing  or  anything  else. 

Our  states  could  do  all  of  these  things 
that  have  been  proposed  as  measures  look- 
ing toward  the  setting  up  of  cooperatively 
owned  communities  and  the  control  of  land. 
Other  countries  have  done  it,  and  more  are 
preparing  to  do  it,  yet  one  hesitates  to  be- 
lieve that  any  such  intelligent  action  can  be 
had  in  this  country,  at  the  present  time,  and 
with  our  present  political  system.  We  shall 
have  to  wait  and  pass  through  all  the  expe- 
riences of  the  others  before  the  eyes  of  the 
country  will  be  opened,  and  State  action  be 
made  possible,  for  it  is,  after  all,  a  national 
consciousness  that  must  be  awakened. 

England's  method  of  granting  a  direct 
subsidy  from  the  national  treasury  is  not  the 
only  wrong  way.  The  Special  Housing 
Committee  of  the  Merchants'  Association  of 
New  York  in  reporting  the  result  of  their 
study  of  the  housing  question  in  New  York 
City,  lay  special  emphasis  on  the  fact  that  the 
[  107  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

way  to  set  the  building  of  houses  in  motion  is 
to  provide  funds.  The  way  to  provide  funds, 
says  the  Committee,  is  to  provide  that  the 
holder  of  mortgages  be  exempted  "from  in- 
come tax  and  surtaxes  of  interest  on  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  mortgage  holdings  in  any 
taxpayer's  hands,  say,  $40,000.  This  is  a 
well-known  and  perfectly  legitimate  induce- 
ment to  capital." 

The  report  concludes  with  a  resolution 
that  Congress  be  immediately  urged  to  grant 
such  relief. 

To  many  it  may  not  appear  that  this  form 
of  exemption  is  "perfectly  legitimate"  ex- 
cept that  anything  is  legitimate  when  the 
need  is  so  great  that  special  favors  no  longer 
appear  illegitimate.  But  it  would  have  been 
fairer  if  the  Committee  in  question  had  con- 
cluded with  an  explanation  along  these  lines : 

"The  housing  situation  in  New  York  City 
is  desperate  and  demands  relief.  We  believe 
that  relief  can  be  obtained  by  freeing  capi- 
tal for  building  loans.  In  order  to  do  this  we 
propose  that  capital  lent  for  building  be  ex- 
empted from  certain  Federal  taxes.  It  may 
not  be  perfectly  fair  to  provide  a  special  ex- 
emption for  a  certain  class,  but  the  neces- 
sity is  too  urgent  to  wait.  Something  must 
be  done,  and  we  believe  that  this  exemption 
[  108  ] 


THE   DILEMMA  IN  HOUSING 

of  such  capital  from  taxes  will  make  it  pos- 
sible to  build  more  houses.  At  the  same 
time,  we  call  the  attention  of  the  people  of 
New  York  City  to  the  fact  that  what  we  are 
proposing  is  merely  a  temporary  relief.  We 
have  not  offered  a  permanent  cure,  and  it  is 
very  likely  that  under  our  system  of  giving 
away  land  values  to  private  owners,  the 
amount  of  money  raised  for  building  by  such 
tax  exemptions  will  only  have  the  effect  of 
raising  land  values  still  higher,  so  that  in  the 
end  we  shall  be  worse  off  than  we  are  now, 
when  it  comes  to  the  next  acute  attack  of 
high  rents  and  shortage  of  houses.  But  as 
you  are  not  at  present  ready  to  change  the 
present  system  of  land  ownership  and  taxa- 
tion, and  as  it  would  take  some  time  to  do  it, 
we  think  you  had  better  accept  our  sugges- 
tion as  a  measure  of  relief  for  this  particular 
case.  Only,  we  counsel  you  to  change  the 
present  system  of  giving  away  land  values, 
very  quickly,  for  until  you  do  it,  there  can 
be  no  permanent  relief  for  the  housing  situ- 
ation in  New  York  City." 

It  is  true  that  the  difficulty  of  dealing  with 
this  question  is  greater  here  than  in  Eng- 
land. There,  as  has  already  been  stated, 
land-ownership  is  never  dreamed  of  by  the 
average  workman,  and  indeed  but  by  only  a 
[  109  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

few  of  the  favored  class.  As  a  consequence, 
the  scheme  of  co-partnership  in  house  and 
land  ownership  makes  a  strong  appeal,  for 
it  is,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  a  step  in  ad- 
vance. It  is  at  least  a  part  ownership  where 
no  ownership  was  looked  for.  In  this  coun- 
try, on  the  contrary,  land  and  house  owner- 
ship are  the  usual  aspiration  of  a  great  ma- 
jority of  workmen,  and  of  all  the  salaried 
class.  Thus  it  is  that  copartnership  in  home 
owning  seems  a  step  backward.  It  is  part 
ownership  where  whole  ownership  was 
looked  for.  Against  this  very  obvious  psy- 
chology, it  may  be  difficult  to  contend,  but 
not  impossible.  The  economics  of  the  ques- 
tion can  be  so  simply  demonstrated,  that  it 
will  not  take  long  for  men  to  see  the  benefits 
to  be  derived.  Particularly  will  the  proposal 
seem  favorable,  if  it  can  be  pointed  out  that 
there  are  no  paternalistic  features  connected 
with  the  plan,  and  that  there  is  to  be  a  really 
democratic  form  of  administration  with  dis- 
tinct economic  benefits  as  time  goes  on. 

There  are  various  methods  of  starting  and 
of  administering  a  co-partnership  scheme, 
but  the  history  of  them  is  easily  available  for 
whoever  cares  to  look  into  the  matter.  Dif- 
ferent customs  may  sanction  different  meth- 
ods, but  in  general,  any  beginning  must  de- 


THE   DILEMMA  IN   HOUSING 

pend  upon  a  group  of  men  who  have  the 
vision  to  see  that  from  a  limited  dividend 
on  a  land-holding  plan  there  can  be 
derived  immeasurable  benefits  through  the 
stabilization  of  values,  the  stabilization  of 
wages,  the  contentment  of  workers,  and  the 
great  degree  of  comfort  and  convenience 
that  are  made  possible  in  this  way,  and 
which,  indeed,  cannot  be  made  possible  in 
any  other  way  to  those  who  earn  only  a  small 
or  moderate  wage. 

The  battle  is  between  the  Producer  and 
the  Non-Producer.  Two  forces  are  arrayed 
against  each  other  and  only  one  can  sur- 
vive. It  must  be  Production,  for  Non-Pro- 
duction cannot  live  except  upon  the  profits 
of  the  body  from  which  it  sucks  the  blood. 
And  those  who  are  engaged  in  Production 
cannot  play  the  game  at  both  ends.  They 
cannot  be  taking  money  and  profits  through 
non-production,  and  through  production  as 
well.  The  temptation  is  great,  and  even 
irresistible  to  most  men,  but  the  Goose  that 
lays  the  Golden  Eggs  is  Production,  no 
matter  in  what  form  it  may  be.  The  enemy 
that  is  bleeding  the  Goose  to  death  is  non- 
production,  no  matter  in  what  form  it  may 
be  —  and  of  all  the  forces  under  which  non- 
production  exploits  its  trade,  none  drains 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

away  the  life-blood  so  swiftly  and  so  surely 
as  the  power  of  charging  humanity  more  and 
more  each  year  for  the  right  to  use  the  sur- 
face of  the  earth. 

The  housing  problem  is  thus  a  land  prob- 
lem. It  never  was  anything  else.  Even 
when  humans  were  herded  in  walled  cities 
where  over-crowding  was  unavoidable,  and 
escape  was  impossible,  as  long  as  the  land 
went  to  him  who  was  strongest  in  getting 
and  holding  it,  the  problem  was  still  to  free 
the  use  of  land  to  men.  Then  it  was  to  free 
it  from  organized  Force  in  the  shape  of 
marauders  armed  with  weapons  to  kill;  to- 
day it  is  to  free  it  from  another  and  even 
more  powerful  force  —  the  Force  of  Igno- 
rance enthroned  in  law  and  tradition,  sol- 
emnly worshiped  by  the  bulk  of  men, 
even  when  persistence  in  the  belief  throws 
the  whole  world  into  a  convulsion  and  de- 
mands the  sacrifice  of  millions  of  lives. 

How  to  use  land  in  the  interest  and  for 
the  benefit  of  mankind  is  the  greatest  funda- 
mental physical  problem  before  the  whole 
world. 


[  112  ] 


VII 

THE    GENERAL   PROBLEM   OF 
LAND   CONTROL 


HROUGHOUT  the  preceding  chap- 
ters, the  emphasis  in  the  so-called 
housing  problem  has  been  laid  upon 
its  relation  to  industry,  and  primarily  upon 
workers  who  are  dependent  upon  labor  of 
the  hands.  But  the  problem  is  equally  acute 
in  its  relation  to  those  who  work  with  their 
brains.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  such 
workers  find  themselves  in  an  even  more 
difficult  position,  for  they  are  largely  unor- 
ganized, and  therefore  are  unable  to  gain 
wage  increases  through  concerted  action.  In 
the  city  of  Washington,  for  example,  the 
problem  of  brain-workers  offers  a  very  per- 
tinent commentary  upon  the  effect  of  the 
pyramiding  system  on  house  rentals.  Wash- 
ington is  a  city  of  brain-workers,  essentially, 
for  it  possesses  few  industries,  and  even 
though  rents  rose,  during  the  war  period,  to 
an  unprecedented  degree,  and  even  though 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

this  was  due  to  the  rapid  influx  of  several 
hundred  thousand  war-workers,  the  fact  re- 
mains that  Washington  had  reached  a  point, 
before  the  war,  where  the  cost  of  living  had 
passed  beyond  the  range  of  income  of  the 
average  employee  in  Government  service. 
This  is  conclusively  shown  by  the  investiga- 
tions of  the  Department  of  Labor,  and  is 
only  another  example  of  what  unrestricted 
speculation  in  land  will  do  to  rentals, 
whether  the  renters  be  hand-workers  or  brain 
workers. 

Yet  the  plan  of  Washington  is  famous,  in 
many  respects,  deservedly  so.  But  when 
it  was  prepared  by  Major  L'Enfant,  plan- 
ning had  not  advanced  to  include  the  social 
requirements  of  a  community.  It  still  re- 
mained an  infant  art  devoted  to  the  beauti- 
ful and  the  grandiose,  although  the  L'En- 
fant plan  also  provided  excellently  well  for 
traffic  routes  and  transportation.  But  it 
made  no  provision  whatever  for  the  physi- 
cal growth  of  the  city,  beyond  laying  out 
the  main  thoroughfares  and  indicating  the 
residential  streets  of  the  future  to  a  limited 
extent.  The  question  of  housing,  for  ex- 
ample, probably  never  entered  into  the  cal- 
culations of  L'Enfant,  and  as  the  years  went 
by,  the  growing  pains  of  Washington  were 
[114] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

left  to  the  delicate  ministrations  of  the  real 
estate  speculators. 

The  truth  is  that  the  L'Enfant  plan 
lacked  the  one  essential  element  which  would 
have  made  Washington  what  today  it  is  not 
—  a  completely  beautiful  city.  That  it  is 
impressive  beyond  other  American  cities,  is 
not  to  be  gainsaid,  but  one  cannot  escape  a 
feeling  amounting  almost  to  indignation, 
when  one  surveys  the  mars  and  scars 
wrought  upon  the  city  by  unrestricted  spec- 
ulation. It  is  not  that  the  famous  Washing- 
ton alleys  are  the  equal  of  any  slum  sections 
in  the  country,  nor  that  the  Government, 
instead  of  adopting  a  carefully  thought  out 
plan  for  public  buildings  to  provide  for  the 
constant  increase  of  the  government's  busi- 
ness, has  encouraged  the  erection  of  a  series 
of  unsightly  buildings,  by  speculators,  for 
the  use  of  the  Departments  at  exorbitant 
annual  charges.  The  truth  is,  of  course,  that 
little  political  prestige  is  to  be  gained  by 
Senators  and  Congressmen  who  vote  money 
for  the  necessities  of  Washington,  and  also 
that  the  real  estate  owners  have  now  a  vital 
interest  in  seeing  that  the  Government  builds 
as  few  buildings  as  possible.  As  the  whole 
rental  values  of  the  business  section  are 
largely  dependent  upon  the  huge  sums  spent 
[115  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

annually  by  the  various  departments  for 
rents,  the  erection  of  suitable  quarters  by 
the  Government  would  throw  on  the  mar- 
ket, immediately  they  were  vacated  by  the 
Government,  a  considerable  quantity  of  old 
buildings.  As  they  could  not  be  absorbed 
in  a  city  where  there  is  little  industry  or 
business,  the  whole  rental  basis  of  the  busi- 
ness section  would  be  disturbed.  Hence  the 
great  difficulty  of  securing  appropriations 
from  Congress  for  the  needed  buildings,  for 
the  evidence  seems  conclusive  that  the  real 
estate  interests  of  Washington  know  how  to 
protect  themselves.  But  this  is  no  indict- 
ment of  persons ;  again  and  again  it  must  be 
remembered  that  it  is  a  system  which  com- 
pels these  things. 

There  are  aggravating  factors  to  this  situ- 
ation introduced  by  the  war  and  the  neces- 
sity for  more  buildings  of  a  temporary  na- 
ture, strewn  all  over  the  city,  but  the  whole 
experience  indicates  that  L'Enfant  either 
ignored  the  necessity  of  providing  some 
measure  of  land  control,  or  else,  admitting 
that  he  urged  it,  was  unable  to  secure  its 
adoption.  It  matters  little  who  or  what  was 
responsible  for  the  omission.  The  result 
has  been  to  impose  an  almost  insurmountable 
financial  obstacle  to  the  realization  of  Wash- 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

ington's  needs  as  a  capital  city.  Wherever 
the  Government  turns  in  its  efforts  to  pro- 
vide for  needed  buildings,  or  to  effect  frag- 
mentary additions  to  the  general  esthetic 
scheme,  it  is  met  by  a  rolled-up  billow  of 
land  values  before  which  Congress  recoils  in 
dismay.  Wherever  the  city  seeks  to  spread 
in  order  to  accommodate  its  fast  increasing 
population,  it  too  is  confronted  with  the 
same  barrier.  The  result  is  that  the  resi- 
dential districts  stretch  out  in  hopelessly 
commonplace  rows  of  pretentious  architec- 
tural sham,  with  a  constantly  increasing 
rental  cost.  So  far  as  providing  for  the  real 
and  vital  needs  of  a  growing  community,  the 
L'Enfant  plan  has  contributed  nothing  ex- 
cept a  system  of  thoroughfares  and  charm- 
ing parks. 

Already  there  is  an  appeal  to  Congress 
for  a  zoning  law  to  limit  the  use  and  occu- 
pancy of  land  and  to  restrict  the  height  of 
buildings.  Downtown  Washington  has 
been  sadly  scarred  by  the  intrusion  of  high 
buildings  and  a  jagged  and  ugly  sky  line,  a 
tendency  which  has  been  much  encouraged 
by  the  Government's  hand-to-mouth  policy 
of  renting  buildings  instead  of  building 
them.  As  for  the  problem  of  housing 
in  Washington,  it  may  be  said  that  the  Gov- 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

ernment  will  some  day  have  to  interfere.  It 
has  done  so,  temporarily,  under  the  stress  of 
war.  Later  on,  when  the  speculators  have 
carried  their  ruinous  policy  to  the  bitter  end, 
the  Government  will  be  obliged  to  come  to 
the  rescue.*  But  the  question  of  how  to  pro- 
vide houses  for  the  brain-workers  in  the  De- 
partments at  Washington  is  the  same  ques- 
tion for  which  an  answer  is  sought  all  over 
the  country,  and  in  this  connection  we  must 
prepare  to  reckon  with  a  new  element  in  the 
pyramid. 

As  the  brain-workers  of  England  are  be- 
ginning to  organize,  so  also  are  the  brain- 
workers  of  America.  Organization  is  the 
only  possible  method  of  relief  in  sight,  and 
yet,  in  truth,  it  only  betokens  further  com- 
plications and  another  acceleration  of  the 
pyramiding  system.  Hitherto,  as  already 
has  been  pointed  out,  the  additions  to  wages 
have  largely  been  secured  by  the  organized 
effort  of  hand  workers.  In  the  near  future, 
we  shall  see  the  brain-workers  forced  to  or- 
ganize on  a  larger  scale,  with  the  result  that 
their  organized  demand  for  higher  wages 
will  be  added  to  the  demands  of  the  hand- 
workers. Conceded  by  the  employers,  as  the 
demand  will  have  to  be,  since  the  brain- 

*  See  Appendix  B. 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

workers  are  now  finding  the  cost  of  liv- 
ing beyond  their  incomes,  whatever  addi- 
tion to  their  salaries  they  obtain  will,  in 
its  turn,  be  projected  into  the  pyramiding 
system.  This  will  mean  a  further  rise  in  the 
cost  of  living,  and  thus  we  shall  continue  to 
witness  wages  (or  salaries)  and  the  cost  of 
living  in  an  even  more  rapid  and  quite  as 
futile  race,  the  first  to  overtake  the  second, 
the  second  to  elude  the  first. 

There  may  be  fluctuations.  Different 
cities  may  be  affected  to  a  different  degree. 
Different  parts  of  the  country  may  have  an 
acute  attack  of  pyramiding,  while  in  others 
it  may  be  slow,  or  even  imperceptible.  On 
the  whole,  it  will  go  on  until  another  in- 
ternal war,  born  out  of  the  hopeless  attempts 
to  bring  any  semblance  of  economic  order 
out  of  the  present  system,  again  forces  an- 
other great  and  rapid  increase  of  prices  with 
another  consequent  reduction  of  the  pur- 
chasing power  of  the  dollar. 

For,  after  all,  what  are  the  too  oft  re- 
curring wars,  except  blind  efforts  to  change 
certain  economic  conditions  or  relationships? 
They  may  be  inspired  by  the  controlling 
classes  of  one  or  more  countries,  as  a  means 
to  certain  industrial  or  financial  ends  con- 
nected with  trading  rights,  land  holdings, 
[  119  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

mining  privileges,  or  any  of  the  benefits  for 
which  men  struggle.  They  may  even  be  in- 
spired, as  so  many  now  believe  to  have  been 
the  case  in  Germany,  by  an  economic  sys- 
tem which  had  been  so  built  up  around  the 
theory  of  armed  force  that  the  cost  of  main- 
taining that  armed  force  had  risen  to  a  point 
where  it  was  necessary  to  convert  the  mili- 
tary machine  into  an  active  instrument  that 
should  produce  profits.  What  were  the 
profits  to  be?  Indemnities,  in  one  case,  or 
market  privileges  in  another.  It  is  idle  to 
assign  the  theory  of  war  to  lust  for  power 
alone;  power  is  only  valuable  as  it  can  be 
used  to  benefit  those  who  possess  it,  and  a 
war  for  more  power  is  in  reality  a  war  for 
more  profits  through  the  control  of  power. 

In  other  words,  the  economic  system  of 
Germany  had  reached  a  point  where  it  was 
threatened  with  bankruptcy,  because  it  could 
not  earn  enough  to  keep  up  the  machinery 
of  war  upon  the  possession  of  which  it  be- 
lieved its  future  to  depend.  I  well  remember 
the  morning  after  the  ultimatum  was  de- 
livered to  Servia  by  Austria,  for  I  spent  the 
whole  of  that  day,  and  most  of  the  following 
night,  travelling  from  Lyons  in  France  to 
Cologne  in  Germany.  I  shared  a  carriage 
with  a  young  German  whose  father  oper- 
[  120  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

atedalarge  works  at  Diisseldorf .  This  young 
man  was  on  his  way  home  from  an  extensive 
trip  to  North  and  South  America,  where  he 
had  been  seeking  a  market  for  heavy  cast- 
ings. Now  of  all  things  difficult  to  export, 
heavy  castings  must  stand  at  about  the  top 
of  the  list,  so  I  inquired  why  he  had  been 
led  to  hope  that  he  might  find  a  market  so 
far  away. 

His  answer  was  that  it  was  a  desperate 
chance,  but  that  the  industrial  situation  in 
Germany  was  in  an  intolerable  condition. 
The  war  machine  was  strangling  industry, 
first  by  withdrawing  so  many  capable  men 
from  the  ranks  of  production  and  thrusting 
the  burden  of  their  support  on  the  producers, 
and  second  by  the  rapidly  increasing  cost  of 
both  building  and  maintaining  the  military 
machine.  Germany  was  in  the  grip  of  the 
pyramiding  system,  like  other  countries,  and 
she  had  experienced  a  sharp  growth  of  the 
pyramid  on  account  of  her  tremendous  war 
expenditures,  which  were  greater  than  her 
production  could  absorb.  She  had  been 
driven  to  levying  a  tax  on  capital,  in  her 
frantic  effort  to  strike  a  balance. 

When  I  asked  what  the  ultimatum  to  Ser- 
via  meant,  he  said  that  he  feared  it  meant 
war.  But  in  answer  to  my  question  as  to 
[  121  ]  ' 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

what  effect  the  war  would  have  on  Germany 
he  expressed  the  conviction  that  German 
industry  was  headed  toward  bankruptcy  no 
matter  what  happened.  Even  if  there  were 
no  war,  they  could  not  keep  on  and  meet 
their  obligations,  and  if  there  were,  he  saw 
no  chance  for  Germany  to  emerge  victorious 
and  able  to  exact  an  indemnity  that  would 
both  pay  the  war  cost  and  help  to  meet  the 
great  national  deficit  between  the  profits  of 
industry  and  the  cost  of  keeping  on  with  an 
even  greater  war  machine.  He  even  went  so 
far  as  to  record  his  belief  that  an  indemnity, 
even  if  obtainable  by  Germany,  would  not 
help  the  situation,  since  he  had  been  con- 
vinced by  "The  Great  Illusion,"  a  copy  of 
which  he  had  in  his  bag,  that  indemnities 
could  not  be  paid  by  one  country  alone  with- 
out exacting  a  tax  on  the  whole  international 
financial  structure.  It  was  a  memorable 
journey  and  our  conversation  indicated 
many  underlying  factors,  as  a  cause  of  the 
war,  which  have  since  come  to  light. 

Again  we  have  seen  the  revolutions  of  the 
past.  Are  they  not  comparable  to  the  mo- 
ment when  the  bees  organize  their  attack 
and  put  an  end  to  the  drones?  Are  not  the 
great  revolutions  of  the  past  very  much  like 
the  battle  in  the  hive?  Are  they  not  the 
[  122  ] 


PROBLEM   OF  LAND   CONTROL 

vague  and  uncertain  efforts  of  the  human 
producers  to  throw  off  the  burden  of  the 
non-producers?  The  bees  have  learned  that 
a  rational  existence  is  impossible  if  the  non- 
producers  are  allowed  to  exist.  The  funda- 
mental aspects  of  human  revolutions  are  not 
understood  either  by  those  who  rebel  or  those 
who  defend,  yet  underneath  all  lies  a  half- 
formed  conviction  on  the  part  of  the  revolu- 
tionists, not  yet  thought  out  or  reduced  to  a 
finality,  but  rightly  connected  with  a  sense 
of  the  injustice  of  the  non-producer.  That 
is  why  revolutions  are  never  successful,  even 
when  they  succeed.  The  basis  of  a  new  order 
has  not  been  thought  out.  One  group  simply 
seeks  to  supplant  another.  Class  is  arrayed 
against  class,  with  one  side  struggling 
vainly  to  upset  a  system  it  does  not  under- 
stand, and  the  other  side  seeking  to  defend  a 
system  which  it  will  not  inquire  into,  and 
which  it  will  fight  to  continue  independent  of 
the  accumulated  evidence  of  the  centuries,  all 
bearing  witness  to  the  fact  that  the  system 
cannot  endure.  When  either  side  learns  the 
true  nature  of  the  system,  there  may  be  hope 
for  a  changed  order;  there  certainly  can  be 
none  in  blind  struggling.  Indeed,  of  all 
things  to  be  averted,  revolution  is  the  most 
important.  Until  there  has  been  reached  a 
[  123  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

general  understanding  of  the  nature  of  our 
economic  system,  no  revolution  could  suc- 
ceed, even  if  it  were  successful  in  overthrow- 
ing a  government.  Those  who  inspire  and 
conduct  it  have  not  thought  out  the  better 
order  they  wish  to  set  up,  and  thus  the  waste 
of  life  and  treasure  would  be  wholly  in  vain. 
In  education  and  an  understanding  of  eco- 
nomics lies  the  only  hope  for  averting  the 
dissasters  that  now  loom  ahead  like  spectres 
of  a  past  that  will  not  die  until  a  new  order 
is  born. 

The  fact  that  the  controlling  class  does 
realize  that  something  is  vitally  wrong  is 
evidenced,  here  and  there,  by  all  sorts  of 
schemes  put  forward  for  changing  the  sys- 
tem. For  instance,  certain  economists  pro- 
pose that  the  gold  standard  should  be  super- 
seded by  a  standard  based  on  the  value  of 
commodities.  It  is  not  easy  to  see  how  this 
could  be  done  in  a  simple  manner,  but  even 
though  it  could,  would  it  help  to  put  an  end 
to  pyramiding?  Does  not  the  difficulty  be- 
gin with  the  struggle  of  the  Non-producers 
to  take  their  toll  from  the  Producers  ?  Every 
increase  in  the  cost  of  living  affects  the  Non- 
producer  as  much  as  it  does  the  Producer. 
The  Non-producer,  who  derives  his  income 
from  land  rents  or  no  matter  what  source, 
[  124  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

let  us  say,  is  accustomed  to  a  certain  scale  of 
life.  On  the  whole,  he  or  she  probably  lives 
very  much  above  the  average.  If  prices  of 
food  and  clothing  go  up,  the  Non-producer 
must  increase  his  income,  or  else  make  a  cut 
in  his  living  expenses.  Naturally  he  prefers 
the  former  course,  and  since  he  is  in  a  posi- 
tion where  he  can  take  action,  he  does  so,  and 
if  his  income  is  from  land,  he  merely  raises 
the  rental  charge  on  the  property  he  owns. 
Beside  that,  the  number  of  Non-producers  is 
increasing  proportionately  faster  than  the 
Producers,  so  that  there  is  a  greater  and 
greater  burden  continually  piling  up  on  the 
back  of  the  producer.  Again  comes  the  Na- 
tional Government,  the  State,  the  County, 
the  Town.  The  cost  of  all  things  goes  up 
for  them  as  well.  Result,  higher  taxation, 
and  the  debt  limit  reached  in  many  cities 
and  towns.  Likewise  a  shortage  of  school- 
buildings,  street  improvements,  and  all  the 
factors  that  go  to  make  up  the  necessities 
and  amenities  of  community  life.  Demand 
for  more  hospitals,  jails,  sanitaria,  and  other 
buildings  in  which  to  take  care  of  the  human 
by-products  that  are  crushed  under  the  pyra- 
mid. It  is  all  a  mad  whirl,  without  rhyme  or 
reason.  Communities  give  away  their  land 
increments  to  private  individuals,  who,  in 
[  125  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

their  turn  lend  the  money  so  obtained  back 
to  the  community,  at  interest,  in  order  to 
make  improvements  which  again  raise  the 
site  value  of  adjoining  land.  Thus  im- 
provements paid  for  with  borrowed  money 
are  paid  for  twice  over,  very  frequently, 
since  both  the  capital  and  the  interest  charge 
have  to  be  paid  by  the  community,  which  is 
continuously  hanging  a  heavier  capitaliza- 
tion around  its  neck.  The  vicious  circle  has 
but  one  possible  issue  and  that  is  the  extinc- 
tion of  the  Non-producing  private  land- 
owner, and  the  complete  death  of  the  tra- 
dition that  a  chosen  few  shall  possess  the 
unassailable  right  to  collect  an  increasing 
annual  rental  from  human  beings  for  the 
right  to  occupy  the  surface  of  the  earth.  It 
is  not  a  question  of  class  against  class,  for 
it  makes  no  difference  who  possesses  the 
right.  It  is  a  question  of  applied  economics 
and  should  be  studied  without  prejudice. 

Under  the  stress  of  the  disasters  caused  by 
the  unregulated  use  of  land  and  unrestricted 
land  speculation,  City-planning,  or  Town- 
planning  as  it  is  often  called,  has  appeared 
in  the  United  States.  How  many  cities 
have  passed  through  the  dream  of  making 
their  community  over,  of  bringing  order  out 
of  chaos,  of  correcting  the  hideous  mistakes 
[  126  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

that  have  been  permitted  through  the  un- 
trammelled private  use  of  land!  Through- 
out the  country  there  is  a  keen  searching  for 
some  method  of  undoing  the  past,  and  yet 
how  many  city  plans  are  today  languishing 
in  the  archives  of  the  city  hall!  How  many!/ 
professional  city  planners  have  collected 
large  sums  for  advice  which  was  worthless,  11 
because  the  plan  could  never  be  carried  out 
under  the  present  system  of  land  tenure  and 
control?  No  city  planning  scheme  is  worth 
the  paper  on  which  it  is  drawn,  unless  it  can 
be  accompanied  by  a  plan  for  land-control. 
If  it  could  be  carried  out,  under  some  ex- 
ceptionally favorable  conditions  without 
land  control,  it  would  only  add  a  huge  prob- 
lem in  taxation  to  the  town  that  carried  it 
out.  If  the  use  value  of  the  land  improved 
by  a  city  plan  is  allowed  to  be  appropriated 
by  individuals,  then  the  city  that  permits 
such  an  appropriation  is  merely  trying  to 
lift  itself  out  of  debt  by  its  boot-straps.  The 
ever  increasing  demand  for  improvements 
and  the  cost  of  maintenance  cannot  be  met 
except  by  a  tax  levy  that  would  be  rejected 
by  every  person  in  the  community.  Cities 
cannot  tax  themselves  much  beyond  the  aver- 
age that  obtains,  for  there  is  competition  in 
taxation  as  in  everything  else.  Too  high 
[  127  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

taxes  will  drive  away  certain  wealthy  tax- 
payers. 

Thus  the  principle  of  discounting  taxes  is 
adopted  and  money  is  borrowed.  No  more 
vicious  system  could  possibly  be  devised  than 
this  plan  of  continually  eating  out  of  the 
pantry  of  the  future.  It  is  all  a  part  of  the 
pyramiding  method  that  has  our  commerce 
and  industry  so  firmly  in  its  grip  that  we 
cannot  escape  wars  and  more  wars,  in  our 
blind  and  vain  struggle  to  perpetuate  a  sys- 
tem that  cannot  stand  without  a  steady  trib- 
ute to  Death,  whether  on  the  fields  of  war, 
or  in  the  fields  of  industry  itself.  Does  any- 
one now  pretend  that  industrial  and  commer- 
cial competition  are  not  in  themselves  war, 
as  well  as  the  seeds  of  the  armed  war  that 
follows? 

The  experiences  of  the  Garden  City  move- 
ment in  England,  and  with  the  so-called  Co- 
partnership Tenants,  indicates  beyond  dis- 
pute that  the  only  method  of  relief  in  the 
contest  of  wages  versus  house  rentals,  is  the 
system  whereby  the  use  value  of  land  reverts 
to  the  benefit  of  those  who  live  and  work 
on  it.  There  are  no  Non-producers  in  these 
communities,  except  those  who  lend  the  orig- 
inal capital  necessary  to  start  the  undertak- 
ing. But  it  is  lent  at  a  low  rate  of  interest, 
[  128  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

and  when  it  has  been  repaid,  the  properties 
belong  to  those  who  live  in  the  community. 
Thus  as  the  town  grows,  and  more  people 
come  there,  and  as  more  industries  or  more 
shops  and  stores  find  it  profitable  to  locate 
there,  the  use  value  of  the  land  for  those  in- 
dustries and  businesses  rises,  and  yields  a 
profit  to  the  community.  Theoretically,  the 
community  might  keep  the  use  value  of  the 
land  down,  and  take  its  profit  in  a  lower  cost 
of  food  and  clothing,  for  example,  but  this 
would  hardly  be  practical  until  the  number 
of  these  communities  had  risen  to  a  point 
where  the  system  of  cooperative  ownership 
was  comparatively  general  throughout  the 
nation. 

But  such  a  condition  is  of  course  still  a 
long  way  off,  although  Australia  and  New 
Zealand  have  initiated  land  reforms  of  a  far- 
reaching  nature.  Germany,  through  land 
purchase  by  her  towns  and  through  zoning 
laws,  had  advanced  to  a  considerable  degree 
in  an  intelligent  effort  directed  at  the 
extinguishment  of  non-producing  land- 
holders. Even  New  York  City,  as  referred 
to  in  the  preceding  chapter,  had  made  a  des- 
ultory movement  toward  putting  an  end  to 
certain  forms  of  destructive  speculation,  for 
she  had  adopted  the  system  of  zoning  or  re- 
[  129  ] 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

stricting  the  use  and  occupancy  of  land 
within  her  limits.  Slowly  and  very  pain- 
fully it  seems  as  though  some  realization  of 
the  actual  nature  of  the  disease  was  becom- 
ing more  and  more  manifest,  although  those 
who  endeavor  to  point  it  out  are  generally 
accused  of  belonging  to  that  particularly 
despised  class  who  advocate  the  abolition  of 
private  property.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  land 
is  not  private  property.  It  belongs  to  the 
nation  and  a  deed  of  conveyance  is  in  reality 
nothing  but  a  franchise  to  hold.  This  point 
was  made  clear  in  the  testimony  taken  before 
the  Coal  Commission  of  England,  at  the  ses- 
sion of  May  6th,  1919,  when  learned  legal 
authorities  such  as  Coke  and  Blackstone 
were  cited  to  the  effect  that  land  in  England 
belongs  to  the  Crown  and  is  held  by  indi- 
viduals merely  as  tenement.  Thus  any  meas- 
ure designed  to  prevent  the  private  appro- 
priation of  revenues  from  land  in  payment 
for  the  privilege  to  use  it,  is  not  in  any  sense 
an  act  directed  at  the  abolition  of  private 
property.  It  is  only  an  effort  to  put  an  end 
to  a  system  that  cannot  continue  without  in- 
volving civilization  in  a  series  of  disasters, 
the  end  of  which  few  intelligent  men  like  to 
think  about.  If  this  point  could  be  made 
clear,  and  if  the  non-producing  class  could 
[  130  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

be  deprived  of  their  claim  that  "Private 
property  is  being  attacked!"  which  they  al- 
ways use  as  a  cry  with  which  to  fight  every 
attempt  to  secure  a  better  and  fairer  and 
more  economic  system  of  land  use  and  ten- 
ure, it  might  be  possible  in  the  United  States 
to  initiate  a  movement  toward  putting  an 
end  to  the  intolerable  system  under  which 
we  at  present  struggle. 

But  stating  the  problem  is  one  thing  and 
offering  a  remedy  is  another.  How  is  it  pos- 
sible to  change  a  system  which  touches  so 
many  people,  which  is  looked  upon  as  good 
and  honorable,  around  which  our  whole  tra- 
dition of  law  is  built,  and  the  changing  of 
which  appears  to  demand  the  sacrifice  of  a 
principle  that  is  looked  upon  as  the  one  fixed 
thing  on  earth?  Those  who  understand  it 
and  wish  to  make  others  understand,  and 
who  know  that  a  true  and  just  prosperity  is 
not  possible  until  the  system  is  changed ;  who 
also  believe  that  there  is  no  way  out  of  mili- 
tarism and  navalism  and  their  recurring  par- 
oxysms of  death  and  destruction,  may  well 
confess  to  a  feeling  of  hopelessness  as  they 
stand  before  a  problem  so  difficult,  so  com- 
plex, so  devoid  of  any  point  of  attack  that 
attack  seems  hopeless.  Men  and  women  are 
willing  to  talk  housing,  to  write  about  hous- 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

ing,  to  advocate  better  housing,  and  yet 
when  the  fundamental  difficulty  is  pointed 
out  and  the  part  played  by  land  is  revealed, 
there  comes  a  hopeless  sigh.  And  yet  the 
signs  are  multiplying  that  points  of  attack 
may  be  discovered.  The  acute  period  is  at 
hand,  for  the  cost  of  our  mistakes  has  piled 
up  into  such  a  monumental  sum,  that  we 
shall  be  driven  to  study  the  process  by  which 
we  have  permitted  it.  Sheer  economic  wis- 
dom will  some  day  point  the  way  to  the 
many  as  it  now  does  to  the  few,  and  then  we 
shall  begin  gradually  to  make  a  basic  change 
in  our  system.  The  housing  problem  may 
well  prove  to  be  the  point  of  attack,  for  it 
vitally  concerns  one  of  the  two  indispensable 
necessities  of  life. 

In  respect  to  the  subject  of  planning,  to 
which  it  is  time  to  return,  it  should  also  be 
pointed  out  that  city  planning  is  only  a  bite 
at  the  cherry.  The  movement  for  planning 
on  a  larger  scale  is  taking  shape  in  England, 
in  Belgium,  and  even  in  far-off  New  Zea- 
land. It  has  been  perceived  that  the  coun- 
try needs  planning  just  as  much  as  does  the 
city,  and  that  it  is  useless  to  plan  a  certain 
territory  or  area  such  as  a  city,  or  a  rapidly 
growing  town,  unless  there  are  correspond- 
ing plans  for  merging  that  territory  with 
[  132  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

the  surrounding  areas  when  it  becomes  nec- 
essary in  the  future. 

The  whole  problem  of  community  plan- 
ning is  involved  not  alone  in  the  location  of 
houses,  streets,  markets,  schools,  churches, 
shops,  and  the  general  accessories,  but  also 
embraces  industry  in  all  forms,  transporta- 
tion, and  agriculture.  It  is  a  problem  of 
keeping  an  economical  balance,  and  of  mak- 
ing a  community  that  is  not  unwieldy  and 
top-heavy.  It  is  of  no  advantage  to  the  city, 
the  state,  or  the  nation,  to  have  cities  and 
towns  grow  to  a  point  where  they  are  not 
only  physically  inefficient,  but  where  the 
scale  of  life  is,  for  the  great  army  of  workers, 
a  descending  rather  than  an  ascending  one. 
City-growth  is  today  a  source  of  great  profit 
to  a  certain  class  of  land  owners,  speculators, 
and  merchants.  City-growth  ought  to  be  a 
source  of  continuing  wealth  to  the  city  it- 
self, and  not  a  more  and  more  perplexing 
problem  of  trying  to  find  money  with  which 
to  maintain  it  as  a  physical  machine,  and  per- 
haps improve  it  as  a  center  of  intellectual 
activity. 

In  this  connection,  it  is  worth  while  to 

quote  the  following  from  the  address  to  the 

recent  New  Zealand  Housing  and  Town 

Planning  Conference  of  the  Hon.  G.  W. 

C  133  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

Russell,  Minister  of  Internal  Affairs  for 
New  Zealand: 

"The  wily  land  speculator,  in  selling 
farms  and  suburban  areas  for  residential 
purposes,  has  taken  little  or  no  account  of 
whether  his  sales  and  resultant  profits  fitted 
in  with  either  the  lay-out  of  the  city  or  the 
adaptability  of  the  lands  he  sold  to  drainage 
or  water-supply.  Such  questions  did  not 
trouble  him.  His  primary  object  has  been 
to  secure  the  enormous  increase  in  value  that 
has  been  obtainable  through  the  necessity  of 
workmen  residing  as  closely  as  possible  to 
their  employment. 

"It  is  time  that  a  stop  was  put  to  this  by 
legislation  being  passed  which  will  make  it 
impossible  for  any  person  to  sell  residential 
areas  unless  provision  is  made  for  the  prop- 
erties fitting  into  a  clearly  defined  scheme 
of  reading,  drainage,  water-supply,  lighting 
for  the  future,  even  though  their  necessity 
at  the  present  may  not  be  so  apparent. 
Coupled  with  the  public  utilities  I  have  men- 
tioned is  one  other  —  namely,  that  from 
every  block  of  land  which  is  sold  for  resi- 
dential purposes  there  should  be  set  aside  by 
the  owner  as  a  gift  to  the  people  necessary 
reserves  for  public  utilities,  such  as  schools, 
post-offices,  parks,  recreation-grounds,  and 
[  134] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

open  spaces.  The  property-owner  who  is 
going  to  draw  large  profits  from  the  com- 
munity must,  in  my  opinion,  be  made  respon- 
sible for  the  needs  of  that  community  in  the 
matters  to  which  I  have  referred.  This  is  a 
most  important  phase  of  the  whole  subject, 
for  the  reason  that  the  village  of  today  in 
ten  years  hence  is  the  township,  in  twenty 
years  after  it  has  possibly  become  a  town  dis- 
trict or  borough,  and  fifty  years  later  may 
be  the  prosperous  miniature  city.  On  us  of 
this  generation  rests  the  obligation  of  seeing 
that  those  who  come  after  us  are  provided 
by  proper  town-planning  schemes  with  those 
things  which  make  for  healthy  environment, 
recreation  areas,  and  the  absence  of  slums. 
How  these  things  may  be  best  secured  by 
legislation  and  the  creation  of  a  healthy  pub- 
lic opinion  is  the  business  of  this  Conference 
to  consider. 

"One  of  the  greatest  problems  of  the  pres- 
ent day  —  and  it  has  been  tremendously  ac- 
centuated by  the  war  —  is  that  of  providing 
for  the  housing  of  the  people.  The  increase 
in  land-values  caused  by  the  growth  of  the 
cities  is  one  of  the  primary  causes  of  high 
rent.  Next  in  importance  comes  the  in- 
crease in  the  cost  of  building-material  of  all 
kinds,  more  particularly  timber,  plus  the 
[  135  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

increase  of  the  cost  of  labor  caused  by  the 
higher  standard  of  living  of  today  as  com- 
pared with  past  years. 

"Two  attempts  have  been  made  to  supply 
the  want  of  homes  in  New  Zealand.  Under 
the  State  Advances  Act  down  to  the  31st  of 
March,  1918,  £3,473,000  had  been  advanced 
to  workers  to  enable  them  to  purchase  or 
erect  their  homes,  the  total  number  of  loans 
outstanding  on  that  date  being  9,511.  Also, 
648  workers'  dwellings  had  been  erected  by 
the  State  under  the  Workers'  Dwellings 
Act,  1905,  and  its  amendments.  The  power 
given  to  Municipal  Corporations  to  erect 
workers'  homes  has  not  been  availed  of.  I 
am  satisfied  that  this  country  must  embark 
upon  a  great  scheme  for  housing  the  people, 
and  that  we  must  "talk  in  millions"  on  this 
subject  if  we  are  to  have  a  happy  and  a  con- 
tented people.  Revolution  and  anarchy  are 
not  bred  in  the  houses  of  men  who  have 
happy  homes  and  delightful  gardens.  Its 
spawn  comes  from  the  crowded  tenement, 
the  squalid  environment,  and  the  slum." 

Also  we  may  note  the  following  state- 
ments from  the  circular  issued  by  the  Ca- 
nadian Government  in  explanation  of  the 
terms  under  which  loans  are  to  be  granted 
for  housing: 

[  136  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

"The  success  of  the  housing  movement  de- 
pends upon  the  acquirement  of  suitable  land 
at  its  fair  value,  and  at  a  cost  which  working 
men  can  afford  to  pay.  It  is  essential,  there- 
fore, that  statutory  provision  shall  be  made 
by  the  provinces  for  a  cheap  and  speedy 
method  of  compulsory  taking  of  the  land  re- 
quired for  housing  purposes.  To  facilitate 
proper  planning  and  to  secure  economy  in 
connection  with  housing  schemes,  compara- 
tively large  sites  should,  as  a  rule,  be  chosen 
so  as  to  permit  of  comprehensive  treatment. 
Such  sites  should  be  conveniently  accessible 
to  places  of  employment,  means  of  transpor- 
tation, water  supply,  sewers,  and  other  pub- 
lic utilities. 

"Where  housing  schemes  are  proposed, 
the  sites  as  well  as  the  buildings,  should  be 
properly  planned  so  as  to  secure  sanitary 
conditions,  wholesale  environment,  and  the 
utmost  economy.  The  land  should  be  sold 
under  building  restrictions  that  will  insure 
its  use  for  residential  purposes  only,  and 
should  it  thereafter  be  desired  to  utilize  any 
of  the  lots  so  sold  for  stores  or  other  busi- 
ness purposes,  the  increased  value  for  such 
business  sites  should  be  made  available  for 
public  purposes  in  connection  with  such 
scheme." 

[  137  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

In  both  of  these  recommendations  by  the 
Canadian  Government,  the  prime  factors  in 
the  solution  of  the  housing  problem  are 
clearly  and  fearlessly  stated ;  and  so  far  as  I 
know,  no  government  has  hitherto  officially 
acquainted  its  citizens  with  these  facts.  You 
must  have  cheap  land  to  begin  with  and  you 
must  keep  the  land  cheap  to  end  with,  as  far 
as  houses  are  concerned.  The  Canadian 
government  bases  its  recommendations  on 
the  theory  that  land  is  to  be  bought  and 
owned  individually ;  but  it  points  out  that  the 
increased  value  in  business  sites  due  to  the 
building  of  houses  should  be  made  available 
for  public  purposes  and  should  not  go  into 
the  pockets  of  the  fortunate  possessors 
of  the  land  required  for  those  building 
sites. 

And  again,  these  remarkable  words  from 
the  recent  report  of  the  Ontario  Housing 
Commission : 

"Houses  cannot  be  built  in  the  air.  We 
must  have  access  to  land,  and,  broadly  speak- 
ing, the  land  question  is  the  root  of  not  only 
housing  problems,  but  of  all  social  problems 
both  in  rural  and  urban  territory. 

"There  is  a  certain  amount  of  land  around 
almost  every  town  and  city  in  Ontario  ripe 
for  development.  I£or  example  there  is  a 
[  138  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

huge  tract  of  vacant  land  lying  between  St. 
Clair  and  Eglinton  Avenues,  west  of  Bath- 
urst  Street,  Toronto,  all  owned  by  one  syn- 
dicate, capable  of  accommodating  a  large 
number  of  people  under  the  most  favorable 
conditions.  Instances  of  such  kind,  varying 
in  degree,  can  be  found  on  the  outskirts  of 
many  of  our  towns. 

"During  boom  times  land  is  subdivided 
for  building  purposes  for  a  radius  of  from 
three  to  ten  miles  outside  city  boundaries. 
Take  for  example  the  cities  of  Ottawa  and 
Hull  with  123,000  inhabitants.  The  Com- 
mission of  Conservation  has  studied  these 
two  cities,  and  from  its  report  the  following 
particulars  are  taken.  The  present  cities 
would  occupy  five  square  miles  if  the  den- 
sity were  forty  people  to  the  acre.  It  is 
estimated  that  the  population  of  these  cities 
will  increase  to  350,000  in  fifty  years,  and  a 
total  area  of  fifteen  square  miles  will  pro- 
vide for  this  ultimate  population  with  a  den- 
sity of  forty  people  to  the  acre.  But  the 
subdivided  area  consists  of  sixty-five  square 
miles  of  territory  only  a  small  part  of  which 
is  likely  to  be  required  for  building  in  a  grad- 
ual way  after  fifty  years.  Of  this  sixty-five 
square  miles,  41,600  acres  is  lying  idle  and 
uncultivated  because  it  is  subdivided  into 
[  139  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

small  lots,  and  held  by  absentee  owners  in 
the  hope  of  securing  speculative  profits 
which  are  not  likely  to  be  realized,  and  which 
the  owners  have  done  nothing  to  earn.  This 
land  contributes  nothing  to  the  public  good 
and  little  to  the  public  revenue. 

"So  long  as  we  allow  the  individual  to  ap- 
propriate the  community  created  incre- 
ment, generally  not  even  taxing  him  on  it, 
we  give  him  that  with  which  he  increases 
rent.  He  has  capitalized  that  which  the 
people  produced  and  should  have.  This  is 
the  greatest  single  factor  in  the  housing 
problem  and  to  really  solve  the  one  we  must 
solve  the  other.  By  the  combined  system  of 
the  assessors  of  letting  off  easily  the  holders 
of  idle  land,  and  taxing  heavily  the  owners 
of  improved  land,  covering  as  well,  all  the 
improvements,  the  holding  of  idle  land  is 
encouraged,  and  the  building  of  homes,  fac- 
tories, and  mercantile  establishments  is  dis- 
couraged. Holding  land  out  of  use  for  a 
speculative  increase  is  not  the  way  to  hous- 
ing reform.  Land  is  fixed  in  amount  —  un- 
like automobiles,  baby  carriages  and  other 
articles.  If  a  spectator  holds  it,  no  one  may 
make  more  land  to  satisfy  the  demand. 
When  the  profits  of  land  speculation  are 
taken  by  the  state  for  public  purposes  land 
[  140  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

speculation  will  become  an  unpopular  occu- 
pation. 

"Let  us  once  establish  the  principle  of 
taxing  the  land  on  its  economic  value,  that  is 
its  value  for  use,  and  correspondingly  de- 
crease the  taxes  on  improvements  and  there 
will  be  such  a  competition  on  the  part  of  land 
for  use  that  our  entire  situation  will  be 
changed. 

"A  tax  on  speculative  profits  and  the  un- 
earned increment  levied  at  the  time  prop- 
erty is  transferred  would  act  as  a  deterrent 
to  speculation,  and  return  to  the  community 
a  large  part  of  the  socially  created  values. 
When  we  wish  to  obtain  the  value  of  land  it 
is  customary  to  appeal  to  real  estate  opera- 
tors, but  they  are  unreliable  valuers  from  a 
community  point  of  view,  and  their  experi- 
ence is  injurious  rather  than  helpful  to 
sound  judgment. 

"In  the  case  of  those  new  and  charming 
towns  which  the  English  Government  has 
built  to  house  munition  workers,  the  un- 
earned increment  has  been  carefully  elimi- 
nated. The  land  is  taken  at  a  pre-war  valua- 
tion and  the  right  is  reserved  of  taking  more 
land  adjacent  thereto  at  the  same  specula- 
tor-defying terms. 

"The  economic  use  of  land  in  the  rural 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

parts  of  the  Province,  and  the  prevention 
of  the  unhealthy  use  of  land  in  crowded  cities 
are  two  of  our  most  urgent  problems.  The 
various  governments  as  owners  and  devel- 
opers of  land  should  eliminate  from  their 
policies  all  that  tends  to  promote  specula- 
tion. It  is  said  that  'some  of  the  worst  ex- 
amples of  speculation  in  Canada  have  been 
initiated  by  governments  and  largely  sup- 
ported by  governments.  The  present  meth- 
ods of  land  transfer  and  settlement  still  give 
every  encouragement  to  speculation.' 

"This  subject  has  received  attention  from 
previous  commissions.  The  Commission  ap- 
pointed by  the  Ontario  Government  to  re- 
port on  unemployment  made  the  following 
statement:  'The  question  of  a  change  in  the 
present  method  of  taxing  land,  especially 
vacant  land,  is,  in  the  opinion  of  your  com- 
missioners, deserving  of  consideration.  It 
is  evident  that  speculation  in  land  and  the 
withholding  from  use  and  monopolizing  of 
land  suitable  for  housing  and  gardening,  in- 
volve conditions  alike  detrimental  to  the 
community  and  to  persons  of  small  means. 
Further,  land  values  are  peculiarly  the  re- 
sult of  growth  of  population  and  public 
expenditure,  while  social  problems  greatly 
increase  as  population  centralizes,  and  the 
[  142  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

relief  of  urban  poverty  calls  for  large  expen- 
ditures from  public  and  private  sources.  It 
appears  both  just  and  desirable  that  values 
resulting  from  the  growth  of  communities 
should  be  available  for  community  responsi- 
bilities. Wisely  followed,  such  a  policy  in- 
volves no  injustice  to  owners  of  land  for 
legitimate  purposes;  and  the  benefits  which 
would  follow  the  ownership  and  greater  use 
of  land  by  wage-earners  justify  the  adoption 
of  measures  necessary  to  secure  these  objects 
as  quickly  as  possible.' 

"Much  of  the  success  of  the  garden  cities 
and  suburbs,  later  proposed,  will  depend 
upon  the  conditions  under  which  land  can  be 
secured  and  it  is  urgently  necessary  to  our 
future  progress  that  the  land  question  should 
at  once  receive  the  most  careful  attention  of 
our  legislators." 

All  of  these  indicate  a  governmental  rec- 
ognition of  the  necessity  of  reversing  the 
present  principle  by  taking  part  of  the  con- 
trol of  land  and  the  profits  from  land  use 
out  of  the  hands  of  private  individuals.  It 
is  a  first  step,  and  when  followed  to  the  end, 
as  it  must  be  some  day,  the  housing  prob- 
lem in  urban  districts  would  be  no  more. 
The  same  principle  of  land  control  adopted 
by  the  nation  at  large  would  free  the  land  to 
[  143  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

occupancy  and  use  at  a  fair  rental;  cost  of 
production  would  be  diminished;  the  pur- 
chasing power  of  money  would  be  increased, 
and  gradually  brought  to  as  nearly  a  stable 
condition  as  the  relations  of  one  country  with 
the  rest  of  the  world  would  permit. 

Until  this  is  done,  there  is  no  solution  of 
the  housing  problem  nor  is  there  an  end  to 
the  present  industrial  chaos,  and  no  possible 
security  against  wars  which  will  continue  to 
drain  one  nation  after  another,  not  only  of 
their  wealth,  but  of  the  best  of  their  life- 
blood. 

It  is  true  that  the  increasing  price  charged 
for  the  use  of  land  on  which  to  build  is  not 
the  only  factor  in  the  race  between  wages 
and  living  costs.  Distribution,  although  it 
is  not  an  actual  process  of  production,  is  a 
most  necessary  adjunct  thereto.  This  is  so 
badly  organized  that  it  adds  materially  to 
the  cost  of  the  things  distributed,  and  under 
our  theory  that  men  are  entitled  to  engage 
in  the  business  of  distributing  almost  with- 
out restraint  the  problem  is  not  one  easily 
dealt  with. 

It  is  not  alone  a  question  of  the  economical 

handling  of  things,  for  there  is  also  the  added 

factor  of  competition.    Let  us  suppose  that 

a  town  has  four  grocers,  each  doing  a  good 

[  144  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

business,  and  providing  all  the  service 
needed  by  the  community.  But  a  fifth 
makes  his  appearance,  which  means  that,  as 
there  can  be  no  appreciable  increase  in  con- 
sumption of  groceries  simply  because  an- 
other grocer  has  opened  a  store,  there  must 
be  a  division  of  business  between  five  instead 
of  between  four.  The  profits  that  formerly 
went  to  provide  a  living  for  four  must  now 
provide  a  living  for  five.  What  happens? 
There  must  be  a  raising  of  prices  in  order  to 
keep  the  five  grocers  from  losing  their  busi- 
ness. Now  if  the  same  thing  happens  in 
other  lines  of  trade,  and  it  does,  the  result  is 
that  after  a  while  there  is  a  decided  increase 
in  the  cost  of  living.  The  need  for  more 
sites  for  shops  sends  up  the  rental  of  prop- 
erty, and  the  community  finds  that  its  cost 
of  doing  business  has  increased,  while  it  has 
gained  absolutely  nothing,  as  a  community. 
'No  one  is  better  off  in  the  end,  except  the 
very  few  who  make  a  good  quick  profit  out 
of  land  sold  at  the  moment  of  keenest  com- 
petition. He  will  be  considered  the  smart, 
or  the  lucky  man,  because  all  the  other  land- 
owners would  have  liked  to  take  a  profit, 
also.  Therefore  there  is  no  community  con- 
sciousness of  what  the  proceeding  actually 
means,  and  no  perception  of  the  fact  that  the 
[  145  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

smart  or  lucky  seller  of  land  at  a  high  price 
has  merely  added  a  capital  charge  to  the 
town,  the  interest  on  which  must  be  paid 
perpetually  by  those  who  live  and  work 
there.  Yet,  as  has  already  been  pointed  out, 
the  theory  of  sanctity  and  propriety  that 
surrounds  and  hallows  this  form  of  money 
making  through  non-production,  is  deeply 
rooted  in  our  economic  system  and  in  our 
individual  conception  of  good  and  honorable 
business. 

What  will  change  it?  There  are  only  two 
forces.  First,  a  thorough  education  in  true 
economics  as  the  foundation  on  which  busi- 
ness and  industry  alone  can  rest,  and  second, 
the  force  of  a  blind  revolution,  conscious  of 
our  intolerable  condition,  and  seeing  vaguely 
that  the  higher  wage  is  an  illusion,  yet 
unconscious  of  the  real  nature  of  the  strug- 
gle that  seems  so  hopeless.  But  the  power 
of  this  second  force  is  very  doubtful. 

The  French  Revolution  was  the  result  of 
a  land  system  that  enslaved  the  peasantry 
and  crushed  it  with  taxation  and  tithes.  The 
Russian  Revolution  was  due  to  the  same 
cause,  and  all  Europe  is  today  a  seething 
ferment  because  of  the  economic  chaos  into 
which  it  has  been  plunged.  Yet  it  is  idle  to 
imagine  that  revolutions  have  greatly 
[  146  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

changed  conditions.  It  is  a  common  illusion 
that  out  of  revolutions  have  grown  great  so- 
cial and  economic  benefits;  but  the  world 
today  is  a  complete  refutation  of  this  theory. 
Revolutions  have  merely  supplanted  one  po- 
litical form  with  another.  Only  the  modern 
Russian  experiment  has  sought  valiantly  to 
change  the  form  of  land  tenure  or  the  form 
of  industry,  which,  by  the  sheer  necessity  of 
their  demands,  dominate  and  control  other 
governments.  The  effect  of  our  Revo- 
lution against  England  was  to  set  up 
a  new  form  of  government  and  under  that 
form  of  government  we  adopted  the  English 
system  of  land  tenure  and  use  and  later  on 
we  borrowed  completely  its  whole  industrial 
system.  As  a  result,  we  are  in  the  selfsame 
predicament.  Those  who  revolted  had  no 
program  for  the  development  of  the  United 
States  so  far  as  land  use  and  tenure  was  con- 
cerned and  later  on  there  was  no  program 
for  the  development  of  industry.  Every- 
thing was  left  to  the  unbiased  license  of  the 
individual.  Today  when  men  openly  discuss 
the  possibilities  of  a  revolution,  only  a  few 
seem  to  realize  that  nothing  but  a  miraculous 
intelligence  out  of  which  a  new  economic 
system  shall  be  born  can  avert  the  impending 
debacle.  Men  have  reached  the  breaking 
[  147  ] 


THE   JOKE   ABOUT   HOUSING 

point  all  over  the  world,  and  the  tragedy 
is  that  they  do  not  realize  the  futility  of  the 
measures  they  propose  as  remedies. 

Never  were  leaders  so  badly  needed  as 
now.  We  want  —  we  must  have  —  an  eco- 
nomic system  based  upon  justice  and  fair 
play  to  all.  It  is  the  task  of  the  nation  to 
provide  such  a  system.  To  do  this,  there 
must  be  profound  sincerity.  The  task  can- 
not be  approached  over  the  old  path.  It 
can  only  be  approached  by  hewing  a  new 
road,  by  cutting  boldly  through  the  forest 
of  platitudes  with  which  we  have  so  long 
solaced  ourselves,  and  by  building  a  road 
that  will  carry  both  the  employer  and  the 
employee  in  peace  and  not  in  discord. 

Such  a  road  must  provide  for  a  higher 
actual  wage  to  the  worker.  Not  merely  a 
wage  that  looks  higher,  because  it  is  larger, 
but  one  that  will  actually  buy  more  things 
and  yield  a  larger  measure  of  pleasure  and 
content.  To  study  the  housing  problem 
without  envisaging  the  real  problem  is  like 
trying  to  discover  rivers  in  the  moon  with 
the  naked  eye. 

And  the  problem  is  not  merely  an  inter- 
esting study  in  economic  or  social  phenom- 
ena. It  is  a  question  of  the  life  or  death  of 
nations,  of  the  survival  or  extinction  of  what 
[  148  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

we  know  as  civilization.  We  are  so  proud 
and  so  forgetful  that  we  cannot  conceive  of 
the  passing  away  of  all  the  life  that  sur- 
rounds us,  and  the  destruction  and  decay  of 
all  the  stupendous  structures  we  have 
achieved.  But  let  us  look  backward  for  a 
moment  and  think  upon  the  civilizations 
that  once  were,  and  that  are  no  longer. 
There  are  forces  in  the  world  based  upon 
nothing  but  the  law  of  human  life,  and  yet 
they  are  so  strong  that  nothing  can  resist 
them.  When  men  are  spiritually  starved, 
the  end  is  visible,  for  man  cannot  and  will 
not  live  in  spiritual  starvation. 

In  this  connection  we  might  also  pause  to 
ask  whether  it  is  not  possible  that  we  can 
over-emphasize  the  importance  of  the  houses 
in  which  men  are  to  live.  In  the  past,  we 
have  most  assuredly  under-emphasized  their 
importance,  so  far  as  the  majority  of  people 
are  concerned,  but  it  is  easily  conceivable 
that  in  a  state  of  real  progress  leading  to  a 
higher  intellectual  and  cultural  state  the 
house  would  lose  its  importance,  while  other 
buildings  would  gain. 

If  we  are  to  achieve  a  larger  measure 

of    freedom    from   manual    labor  then  we 

should  likewise  be  set  free  to  enjoy  a  larger 

measure  of  mental  recreation  or  application. 

[  149  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

The  house,  continually  improved  and  per- 
fected as  an  economic  appliance,  wherein  we 
might  satisfy  our  physical  needs  with  the 
least  amount  of  labor,  where  cooperation  in 
many  services  would  make  the  task  of  the 
housekeeper  much  lighter,  would  for  ex- 
ample, leave  the  mother  free  to  resume  many 
of  those  educational  duties  in  the  life  of  her 
children  —  duties  which  have  been  thrust  in 
an  ever  increasing  measure  on  the  schools, 
with  the  result  that  many  a  child  is  today 
more  inspired  by  a  teacher,  as  it  has  the 
good  fortune  to  come  into  contact  with  such 
a  one,  than  it  is  by  its  own  mother.  It  is 
idle  to  attempt  to  measure  the  value  in  giv- 
ing such  an  increased  measure  of  lessons  to 
the  mother  through  a  corresponding  release 
from  many  household  duties  that  are  now 
made  necessary  by  our  ill-planned  and  ill- 
adapted  houses,  and  our  continual  repeti- 
tion and  duplication  of  work  and  service  that 
could  be  infinitely  better  done  if  organized 
along  lines  of  training  and  skill.  By  such 
a  method,  and  in  many  ways,  we  could  raise 
the  performance  of  domestic  service  to  a  task 
of  dignity  and  to  a  level  where  it  would  not 
carry  the  stigma  of  a  despised  social  infe- 
riority. 

It  is  toward  such  a  perfection  of  the  house 
[  150  ] 


PROBLEM   OF  LAND   CONTROL 

that  we  must  strive,  and  if  we  do,  shall  we 
not  also  see  that  in  that  process  of  emancipa- 
tion we  are  to  find  the  house  growing  less  im- 
portant as  a  piece  of  machinery,  while  other 
structures  become  more  important?  Private 
life  ought  to  grow  more  simple  and  public 
life  more  dignified  and  noble.  We  ennoble 
above  all  things  the  soldier  in  his  misery  of 
mud  and  cold,  courageously  enduring  all 
things  in  the  essence  of  absolute  unselfish  de- 
votion. Why  can  we  not  ennoble  the  same 
man  when  he  comes  home  from  work  in  a 
coal  mine? 

The  answer  lies  in  the  fact  that  in  the  first 
case  we  ourselves  have  become  devoted  to  a 
national  ideal,  while  in  the  second  case,  we 
have  lost  that  ideal  and  replaced  it  with  a 
commonplace  conviction  that  the  world  is 
ruled  by  the  law  of  profit  and  that  idealism 
may  be  all  right  to  talk  about  but  has  no 
place  in  business.  We  descend  from  an 
overwrought  state  in  which  a  mixture  of 
emotion  and  real  humanity  have  fluxed  to 
produce  a  self-abandonment  that  goes  to  the 
extreme  where  life  is  given  heroically  and 
without  complaint,  to  a  state  where  life 
in  the  abstract  has  no  vital  appeal.  During 
our  overwrought  condition  we  subscribe  to 
resolutions  over  and  over  again,  by  which 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

we  think  that  we  have  bound  ourselves  to 
change  the  old  conditions.  Yet  when  we  are 
confronted  with  the  problem,  the  very  diffi- 
culty of  finding  a  way  soon  kills  our  high 
resolve,  the  task  seems  so  hopeless  in  the 
face  of  the  system  in  which  we  are  caught. 

Undoubtedly  there  is  a  sincere  wish  on 
the  part  of  a  great  many  people  for  better 
houses  for  the  low-priced  workers  of  the 
United  States.  But  the  discovery  has  been 
made  by  those  who  have  seriously  tried  to 
find  some  way  of  realizing  their  wish,  that 
it  is  economically  impossible.  The  same  dis- 
covery, in  regard  to  the  payment  of  a  higher 
actual  wage,  has  not  been  made,  and  yet 
there  are  also  a  great  number  of  people  who 
believe  that  such  a  higher  wage  should  be 
paid.  Undoubtedly  many  also  believe  that 
by  reason  of  the  fact  that  wages  are  today 
in  dollars  and  cents  higher  than  ever  before, 
the  recipient  is  actually  receiving  a  wage 
that  will  enable  him  to  buy  more  than  ever 
before,  while  this  is  not  true,  except  in  by 
far  the  minority  of  cases.  But  what  is  also 
true,  as  has  already  been  stated,  is  that  there 
is  no  possible  way  of  paying  all  workers  an 
actually  higher  wage  —  one  that  will  ac- 
tually buy  more  things.  The  non-producers, 
largely  in  the  shape  of  land-owners,  appro- 
[  152  ] 


PROBLEM  OF  LAND  CONTROL 

priate  the  added  amount  handed  to  the 
wage-earner,  by  demanding  more  and  more 
for  the  use  of  land. 

We  even  boast  in  our  pride  that  land  val- 
ues in  the  United  States  are  going  up  — 
which  means,  under  our  system  of  giving 
these  values  to  individuals,  that  the  cost  of 
operating  our  national  plant,  whether  it  be 
manufacturing,  transportation,  agriculture, 
or  housing,  is  going  up.  Those  who  produce 
must  pay  an  interest  charge  on  that  higher 
land  value,  and  little  by  little,  the  landlords 
grow  more  powerful  and  the  tenants  more 
helpless.  If  we  shifted  the  position  it  would 
be  no  different.  The  present  tenants  would 
make  no  better  landlords,  although  the  pres- 
ent landlords  might  make  better  tenants. 

We  must  find  a  way  to  control  the  use  and 
occupancy  of  land  and  make  its  added  use 
value  become  a  source  of  benefit  to  all,  rather 
than  a  present  curse  to  the  majority  and  a 
portentous  menace  to  the  country  as  a  whole. 

Without  land  control,  there  is  no  way  out 
of  a  situation  that,  bad  as  it  may  be  in  old 
Europe,  is  even  now  causing  many  misgiv- 
ings and  much  apprehension  to  those  who 
have  believed  so  strongly  in  the  great  des- 
tiny of  the  New  America.  Most  people  are 
quite  unwilling  to  believe  these  things  or 
[  153  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

even  to  permit  them  to  be  discussed,  pub- 
licly or  privately,  but  there  are  a  few  coura- 
geous Americans  left.  They  realize  that  we 
are  in  truth  at  the  parting  of  the  ways,  and 
that  our  destiny  is  now  utterly  dependent 
upon  the  way  that  shall  be  chosen. 
Which  one? 


[  154  ] 


VIII 
WHAT  TO  DO 

IN  the  midst  of  the  present  ferment,  when 
so  great  a  proportion  of  people  are  un- 
willing to  search  fearlessly  and  honestly 
for  a  way  out,  who  can  offer  a  program  such 
as  will  command  attention?  Who  can  divert 
the  press  from  its  stupid  pursuit  of  phantoms, 
from  its  preposterous  witch  hunting,  from 
its  perversion  of  facts  and  its  suppression  of 
all  loyalty  and  patriotism,  when  those  quali- 
ties are  not  based  upon  its  own  senseless 
conception  of  what  citizenship  means?  No 
greater  menace  confronts  the  nation  thani 
this  utter  prostitution  of  news-gathering  to 
falsehood  and  misrepresentation.  Fortu- 
nately, the  wide  distrust  which  these  methods 
have  engendered  gives  hope  that  truth  and 
reason  are  not  forever  to  be  engulfed  in 
the  ignoble  sea  of  newspaper  ink,  but  that 
they  may  rise  again  through  the  sheer  in- 
herent common  sense  of  our  people. 

But  in  the  meantime,  what  to  do?     Who 
[  155] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

has  developed  a  philosophy  of  industry  such 
as  may  be  offered  without  inviting  such  ridi- 
cule or  persecution  as  completely  to  dis- 
credit the  program  it  embodies?  For  my- 
self, I  am  convinced  that  we  must  restudy 
the  whole  industrial  system,  without  fear 
and  without  prejudice,  and  that  it  will  be 
utterly  useless  to  attempt  any  effort  toward 
better  housing  until  we  have  gone  to  the  very 
bottom  of  the  morass  in  which  we  now 
flounder. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  communal  life, 
Letchworth,  the  first  garden  city  of  Eng- 
land, still  stands  as  the  one  real  example 
of  community  building  in  which  there  has 
been  an  intelligent  appreciation  of  all  the 
factors  that  go  to  make  the  life  of  a  nation. 
And  as  it  is  with  community  building  that 
the  problem  seems  to  begin,  we  must  re- 
study  not  so  much  Letchworth  but  the  prin- 
ciples which  controlled  its  origin  and  de- 
velopment. These  are  very  simple.  They 
rest  upon  the  concept  of  man  as  a  social 
being,  requiring  work  under  conditions  that 
inspire  him  to  give  of  his  best,  enabling  him 
to  found  and  maintain  a  decent  home,  and 
to  enjoy  a  rest  such  as  will  repair  his  body 
and  satisfy  his  spiritual  and  recreational 
needs.  But  this  concept  of  man  does  not 
[156  ] 


WHAT   TO   DO 

begin  with  man  in  a  city.  It  begins  with 
man  everywhere,  and  means  that  all  men 
are  entitled  to  these  things.  Today  we  herd 
millions  of  people  in  industrial  centers  where 
both  work  and  rest  are  impossible,  except 
under  the  feverish  lash  that  drives  urban 
life  at  higher  and  higher  speed.  We  crowd 
them  into  mammoth  buildings  by  day,  and 
into  other  vast  buildings  by  night.  To 
accommodate  their  multitudinous  coming 
and  going  we  burrow  under  our  streets  and 
under  our  rivers,  shutting  them  into  trains 
like  cattle  going  to  an  abattoir.  On  the  sur- 
face of  the  earth  it  is  hardly  better.  Con- 
gestion rages  everywhere.  In  the  streets, 
where  traffic  daily  becomes  more  difficult  and 
dangerous;  in  the  tram-cars,  where  all  is 
jostle  and  push  (and  here  we  note  the  fact 
that  in  spite  of  an  immense  increase  in 
traffic,  our  whole  electric  railway  system  con- 
fesses itself  bankrupt,  demanding  as  the 
price  of  its  preservation  an  increase  in  fares 
such  as  must  again  be  reflected  in  further 
higher  expense  to  the  workers,  and  a  conse- 
quent further  higher  cost  to  the  consumers 
—  a  phenomenon  directly  attributable  to  the 
result  of  allowing  individuals  to  appropriate 
the  land  values  produced  by  improvements 
in  transportation,  and  thereby  to  levy  a 
[  157  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

private  tax  on  all  those  who  are  compelled 
to  use  the  land) ;  wherever  we  turn,  in  our 
crowded  cities,  we  meet  life  in  restless  floods. 
Even  the  places  of  amusement  are  con- 
gested, for  alas !  all  amusement  has  now  been 
commercialized,  forcing  men,  women  and 
children  to  rely  entirely  upon  sources  out- 
side of  themselves  when  they  seek  escape 
from  the  fever  of  the  city  and  its  mental  drain. 
Even  our  schools  are  wofully  inadequate, 
both  as  to  buildings  and  educational  facili- 
ties. Ever  faster  and  faster  grow  the 
needs;  ever  faster  and  faster  do  they  be- 
come impossible  and  unrealizable,  and  yet 
we  pursue  the  illusion  as  though  we  were 
straining  like  thirsty  men  after  the  mirage 
that  rests  forever  at  the  desert's  edge.  Land 
values  rise  —  life  values  fall.  The  moun- 
tain of  debt  piles  itself  up  everywhere.  Our 
cities  no  longer  know  which  way  to  turn 
for  money  with  which  to  meet  the  growing 
needs  of  their  expanding  congestion.  Prob- 
lems multiply  faster  than  the  mind  of  the 
citizen  can  comprehend  them,  and  he  must 
fight  his  way  through  the  tissue  of  political 
fraud  and  office-seeking  promises,  ere  he 
can  hope  to  gain  a  glimmer  of  the  truth. 

In  brief,  such  is  the  picture  of  the  modern 
city.     By  contrast,  what  has  happened  to 
[  158  ] 


WHAT  TO  DO 

the  country?  Landlordism  has  crept  across 
the  land  like  a  pest.  With  landlordism  goes 
soil  depreciation,  a  declining  land  productiv- 
ity, a  degenerate  race  of  tenant  farmers, 
an  abandonment  of  the  countryside  by  the 
younger  generations,  a  dreary  monotony 
for  those  who  are  forced  to  stay.  They  are 
largely  condemned  to  isolation,  in  spite  of 
the  telephone,  the  automobile,  and  the  rural 
free  delivery  —  those  elements  of  country 
life  which  are  commonly  thought  to  have 
made  the  countryside  a  social  paradise  — 
and  thus  every  boy  and  girl  seeks  to  escape 
to  a  community  where  social  contacts  are 
possible.  Our  problem  then  is  the  nation 
as  a  whole,  and  not  a  part  of  it.  The  prin- 
ciple on  which  Letchworth  was  founded 
takes  cognizance  of  the  nation,  although  it 
is  expressed  in  a  community  which  has  today 
attained  a  population  of  some  twelve  thou- 
sand. The  principle  is  this:  Industry  and 
agriculture  must  balance  each  other.  Once 
they  did,  even  in  the  United  States,  where 
the  small  New  England  towns  gradually 
developed  small  industries  such  as  gave  the 
community  a  reason  for  its  existence.  A 
balanced  condition,  such  as  this,  means  that 
those  who  depend  upon  centralized  industry 
for  their  livelihood  have  free  access  to  the 
[  159  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

soil,  and  also  to  a  community  life ;  that  those 
who  till  the  soil  on  an  extensive  basis, 
whether  in  dairying  or  truck-farming,  shall 
likewise  have  access  to  a  community  — 
that  they  shall,  in  fact,  belong  to  and  be  a 
part  of  a  community  such  as  will  afford  them 
and  their  wives  and  children  full  opportuni- 
ties for  their  mental  and  spiritual  develop- 
ment. If  you  add  to  this  the  principle  of 
communal  ownership  of  land,  under  which 
system  all  additions  to  land  values  revert  to 
the  community  and  constitute  a  source  of 
revenue,  then  you  have  a  picture  of  the 
Letchworth  idea.  It  seems  an  unanswer- 
able philosophy,  and  it  is  encouraging  to 
know  that  a  second  Letchworth  is  now  in 
process  of  creation,  also  in  England. 

The  principle  involved  is  the  direct  antith- 
esis of  our  present  helter-skelter  method 
of  everybody-for-himself  and  the  devil-take- 
the-hindmost.  It  does  not  involve  the  sup- 
pression of  individuality  or  the  enslavement 
of  anybody  to  a  pedantic,  monotonous,  or 
tasteless  ideal,  in  which  life  has  been  re- 
duced to  a  regime.  It  substitutes  for  un- 
bridled individualism,  licensed  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  humanity  wherever  and  when- 
ever it  may,  a  cooperative  basis  of  produc- 
tion in  which  workers  of  all  kinds  may  find 
[  160  ] 


WHAT  TO  DO 

themselves  set  spiritually  free  to  do  their 
best.  Instead  of  spurring  men  on  to  dis- 
cover the  future  needs  and  necessities  of 
mankind,  in  order  that  they  may  capture 
the  means  of  satisfying  them  and  thus  make 
man  pay  to  the  uttermost  limit,  the  principle 
of  Letchworth,  expanded  to  national  aims, 
would  mean  that  the  satisfaction  of  man's 
needs  and  necessities  should  be  the  object 
of  study  in  order  that  they  might  be  satis- 
fied, and  not  in  order  that  they  might  be 
made  the  means  of  levying  the  pirate's  trib- 
ute. 

Letchworth  also  rests  upon  the  economic 
concept  that  transportation  is  waste,  unless 
compelled  by  exigencies  beyond  the  control 
of  man,  such  as  soil  and  climate.  The  belt 
of  agricultural  land  which  surrounds  the 
city  produces  much  of  the  food  required  by 
the  community.  But  this  agricultural  belt 
is  to  be  maintained  and  not  sacrificed 
to  the  belief  that  a  larger  community 
would  be  better.  The  land  speculator  is 
helpless  to  perpetrate  his  crimes  in  Letch- 
worth. The  whole  development  of  the  city 
is  in  the  control  of  its  citizens,  and  it  is 
hardly  to  be  believed  that  they  will  bring 
the  calamities  of  congestion  down  on  their 
heads  merely  for  the  sake  of  benefiting  a 


THE  JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

few  merchants  or  storekeepers.  Perhaps 
nothing  can  be  made  completely  proof 
against  a  momentary  epoch  of  greed,  but 
surely  nothing  could  be  a  greater  preventive 
of  rash  or  hasty  action  than  to  have  the  citi- 
zens of  a  city  given  the  absolute  power  to 
decide  how  the  land  within  their  limits  should 
be  used. 

By  material  ends  alone  man  will  not 
achieve  freedom.  But  to  those  who  are 
persuaded  that  emancipation  must  come 
through  a  spiritual  process,  quite  dissociated 
from  any  question  of  economics,  or  to  those 
who  believe  that  man  must  move  forward 
economically,  in  order  to  gain  spiritual  free- 
dom, I  offer  the  program  published  by  the 
Cities  Committee  of  the  Sociological  So- 
ciety, London.  It  is  as  follows : 

"Our  faith  is  in  moral  Renewal,  next  in 
Re-education,  and  therewith  Reconstruction. 
For  fulfilment  there  must  be  a  Resorption 
of  Government  into  the  body  of  the  com- 
munity. How?  By  cultivating  the  habit 
of  direct  action  instead  of  waiting  upon  rep- 
resentative agencies.  Hence  these  social 
imperatives : 

"1.  Cease  to  feel  Labour  personally  as  a 
burden,  or  see  it  socially  as  a  problem ;  prac- 
tise it  as  a  primary  function  of  life. 
[  162  ] 


WHAT   TO   DO 

"2.  Raise  the  life-standard  of  the  people 
and  the  thought-standard  of  schools  and 
universities;  so  may  the  workman  and  his 
family  receive  due  meed  of  real  wages;  the 
leisure  of  all  become  dignified;  and  for  our 
money-economy  be  substituted  a  life-econ- 
omy. 

"3.  Stimulate  sympathetic  understanding 
between  all  sections  of  the  community  by 
cooperation  in  local  initiative;  so  may  Eu- 
ropean statesmen  be  no  longer  driven  to 
avoid  revolution  by  making  war. 

"4.  Let  cities,  towns,  villages,  groups,  asso- 
ciations, work  out  their  own  regional  salva- 
tion ;  for  that  they  must  have  freedom,  ideas, 
vision  to  plan,  and  means  to  carry  out,  (a) 
betterments  of  environment  (such  as  hous- 
ing fit  for  family  life  and  land  for  a  renewed 
peasantry),  (b)  enlargements  of  mental 
horizon  (such  as  forelooking  universities 
quick  with  local  life  and  interests) ,  (c)  com- 
munitary  festivals  and  other  enrichments  of 
life.  All  these  must  be  parts  of  one  ever- 
growing Design  for  the  coming  years  to 
realize. 

"5.  Make  free  use  of  the  public  credit 

for  these  social  investments;  but  don't  pay 

the  tribute  called  market  rate  of  interest; 

create   the   credit   against   the   new    social 

[163  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT  HOUSING 

assets,  charge  it  with  an  insurance  rate  and 
a  redemption  rate,  and  pay  the  bankers 
a  moderate  commission  to  administer  it 
through  their  system  of  interlocking  banks 
and  clearing  houses ;  the  present  unacknowl- 
edged use  of  the  public  credit  by  bankers 
must  be  recognized  and  regulated,  and  be- 
ing for  private  profit  must  be  subordinated 
to  the  new  communitary  uses. 

"6.  Fill  the  public  purse  from  a  steeply 
gradated  income-tax  (proceeds  being  shared 
by  the  local  with  the  central  authority) ;  dis- 
criminate in  favour  of  investments  that  im- 
prove the  environment  and  develop  the 
individual.  Let  the  tax-gatherer  take  heavy 
toll  of  'unearned  increments,'  such  as  the 
'bonus'  to  shareholders,  the  appreciation  of 
speculative  securities,  the  rise  in  land  values 
from  growth  of  population. 

"7.  Eschew  the  despotic  habit  of  regi- 
mentation, whether  by  governments,  trusts, 
companies,  tyrants,  pedants  or  police;  try 
the  better  and  older  way  of  coordination  ex- 
panding from  local  centers  through  city, 
region,  nation,  and  beyond ;  so  may  the  spirit 
of  fellowship  express  itself,  instead  of  being 
sterilized  by  fear,  crushed  by  administrative 
machinery  or  perverted  by  repression. 

"8.  Resist  the  political  temptation  to  cen- 
[  164  ] 


WHAT  TO  DO 

tralize  all  things  in  one  metropolitan  city; 
seek  to  renew  the  ancient  tradition  of  federa- 
tion between  free  cities,  regions,  dominions. 

"9.  Encourage  the  linkage  of  labour  and 
professional  associations  across  international 
frontiers;  it  is  these  that  can  quicken  the 
unity  of  western  civilization  and  bring  forth 
its  fruits  of  concord.  Further,  let  our  im- 
perial bureaucrats  cease  from  their  superior 
habit  of  instructing  the  orientals  and  try  to 
learn  from  them. 

"10.  In  general,  aim  at  making  individ- 
uals more  socialized  and  communities  more 
individualized.  To  that  end,  let  schools  sub- 
ordinate books  to  outdoor  observation  and 
handicrafts ;  let  teachers  draw  the  matter  and 
the  method  of  education  from  the  life  and 
tradition  of  their  pupils'  own  region,  as  well 
as  from  the  history  and  culture  of  mankind 
at  large.  Let  universities  seek  first  for  syn- 
thesis in  the  civic  life  around  them ;  and  only 
thereafter  in  the  pages  of  philosophy. 
Above  all  let  governing  bodies  learn,  if  not 
from  the  churches,  at  least  from  the  psycho- 
logical and  social  sciences,  the  distinction 
between  temporal  and  spiritual  powers,  and 
cease  to  play  the  double  role  of  Pope  and 
Csesar.  As  for  the  chemical  and  mechani- 
cal sciences  let  them  repent  of  making  hell- 
[  165  ] 


THE   JOKE  ABOUT   HOUSING 

upon-earth  under  war-lord  and  money-lord, 
and  take  service  in  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
on  earth.  Then  may  the  machine  industry 
learn  from  artist-craftsman  and  town-plan- 
ner the  social  significance  of  Design  in  all 
human  things,  including  the  city  itself ;  that 
way  lies  the  guild  ideal  and  hope  of  its  ex- 
pressing the  civic  spirit.  Let  civic  designers 
give  rustics  access  to  the  city  as  well  as 
townsmen  access  to  nature ;  that  way  lies  the 
regional  ideal ;  and  some  day  men  will  enter 
through  this  portal  into  paradise  regained. 

"Along  these  lines  there  is  movement; 
but  lacking  in  volume  and  unity.  A  cru- 
sade of  direct  action  has  long  been  afoot ;  but 
with  many  halts  and  in  sparse  and  isolated 
companies.  The  Spirit  Creative  is  liberated 
and  in  flight;  but  too  timidly  and  on  dis- 
severed quests.  It  is  time  for  clearer  under- 
standing, closer  cooperation,  deeper  unison 
between  all  men  and  women  of  good  will  and 
high  endeavour.  So  may  be  prepared  defi- 
nitely planned  campaigns  for  the  making 
and  maintenance  of  worthy  homes,  smiling 
villages,  noble  cities.  To  engage  the  mili- 
tant energies  of  the  race  in  these  adventures 
of  constructive  peace  and  heroically  to  salve 
the  perennial  wreckages  of  humanity  would 
be  the  moral  equivalent  of  war." 
[  166  ] 


WHAT   TO   DO 

Here  is  a  program  for  Housing  Reform, 
as  it  has  so  long  been  called,  which  is  also 
a  human  basis  for  Industry,  a  noble  con- 
cept of  Peace,  a  foundation  upon  which  to 
erect  a  real  system  of  Education.  It  ab- 
sorbs the  housing  problem  into  the  whole 
social  and  economic  body,  informing  it  with 
the  spirit  of  humanity  and  illuminating  it 
with  the  light  of  a  genuine  democracy. 


[  167  ] 


APPENDIX  A 

From  Canadian  Correspondence  to  the 
Westminster  Gazette,  London,  October  2, 
1919. 

"Acquaintance  with  the  history  and  opera- 
tion of  anti-Trust  and  anti-Combine  legis- 
lation enacted  at  Ottawa  in  the  last  thirty 
years  affords  no  ground  for  expecting  any 
general  beneficent  results  from  the  Profi- 
teering Act  passed  by  Parliament  at  West- 
minster, now  going  into  service.  In  1879 
the  Dominion  Parliament  enacted  a  tariff 
the  manifest  purpose  of  which  was  to  give 
statutory  sanction  and  Government  aid  to 
profiteering  by  Canadian  manufacturers. 
By  its  friends  the  Act  was  dubbed  a  national 
policy  tariff.  In  it  were  embodied  scores  of 
penalty  duties  that  were  to  be  paid  into  the 
Dominion  Treasury  by  men  and  women  who 
bought  other  than  wares  made  in  Canada; 
and  by  so  doing  manifested  a  determination 
not  to  assist  Canadian  manufacturers  in 
profiteering  with  the  sanction  of  the  law,  and 
[  169  ] 


APPENDIX   A 

also  with  the  alert,  active,  and  continuous 
aid  of  the  Customs  Department  at  Ottawa. 

"Soon  Trusts  and  Combines  —  with  a  cot- 
ton and  sugar  Trust  easily  in  the  lead  — 
were  organized  to  enable  manufacturers  to 
exact  the  last  cent  possible  under  the  Tariff 
Act  of  1879.  There  was  a  general  outcry 
against  Trusts  and  the  rapacity  that  is  al- 
ways characteristic  of  Trusts;  and  in  1889 
the  Conservative  Government  that  was  re- 
sponsible for  the  Act  sanctioning  and  aid- 
ing profiteering  by  manufacturers  was 
forced  to  do  something  to  allay  popular  dis- 
content due  to  the  Trusts  and  the  general 
and  almost  uniform  use  the  Trusts  had  made 
of  the  power  to  exploit  consumers  bestowed 
on  the  Trusts  by  the  first  of  the  national 
policy  tariffs. 

"An  Anti-Trust  Law  was  passed  in  1889 
at  the  instance  of  the  Conservative  and 
avowedly  Protectionist  Government,  of 
which  Sir  John  A.  Macdonald  was  Premier. 
It  was  without  teeth!  It  was  quite  innocu- 
ous, and  was  never  heard  of  after  it  had  re- 
ceived the  Royal  Assent. 

"At  the  time  of  the  change  of  Government 
in  1896,  the  popular  outcry  against  Trusts 
and  their  exactions  was  as  loud  and  as  per- 
sistent as  ever.  The  Liberals  in  opposition 
[  170  ] 


APPENDIX   A 

had  had  an  effective  part  in  the  long-con- 
tinued agitation  against  Trusts.  Accord- 
ingly, when,  in  1897,  they  adopted  and 
greatly  extended  the  national  policy  system 
of  the  Conservative  Governments,  the  Lib- 
erals embodied  in  their  Protectionist  Tariff 
a  section  —  No.  XVIII  —  under  which  it 
was  possible,  by  Order  in  Council,  to  with- 
draw Protection  from  a  manufactured  ar- 
ticle that  was  in  control  of  a  Trust;  Protec- 
tion was  to  be  withdrawn  only  when  a  Trust 
'unduly'  enhanced  prices,  or  in  any  other 
way  'unduly'  promoted  the  advantage  of 
manufacturers  or  dealers,  at  the  expense  of 
consumers. 

"But  the  Section  was  so  guardedly  framed 
as  regards  its  operation,  that  it  might  well 
have  been  drafted  by  counsel  for  the  Trusts. 
The  initial  processes  were  roundabout,  and 
procedure,  as  a  whole,  was  extremely  costly. 
As  a  consequence,  Section  XVIII  was  put 
into  service  only  once.  This  was  in  1901, 
when  newspaper  publishers,  at  great  ex- 
pense, satisfied  a  Court  that  there  was  a  com- 
bination of  paper  manufacturers  which  had 
'unduly'  enhanced  prices,  and  had  long  ex- 
ploited the  publishing  industry  to  the  last 
degree  of  its  Tariff  Protection. 

"In  1910  there  was  still  another  Act  to  re- 


APPENDIX   A 

strain  tariff-buttressed  trusts  from  pushing 
their  statutory  protection  against  all  out- 
side competition  to  its  extreme  limit ;  it  was 
passed  at  the  instance  of  the  Liberal  Govern- 
ment that  was  responsible  in  1907  for  the 
highest  Protectionist  tariff  ever  enacted 
in  any  part  of  the  British  Empire  since  the 
end  of  the  old  commercial  system  in  1846. 

"The  Anti-Trust  Act  of  1910  amended 
Section  XVIII  of  the  Tariff  Act  of  1897 
so  as  to  make  it  a  little  less  difficult,  and  less 
costly  to  get  a  prima  facie  case  against  a 
trust  before  the  courts.  For  thirty  years  — 
1889-1919  —  there  have  thus  been  Acts  on 
the  Statute  Book  of  the  Dominion  to  restrain 
trusts  from  profiteering  under  national  pol- 
icy tariffs. 

"Trusts  in  Canada  are  as  notorious  as 
trusts  in  the  United  States;  and  compara- 
tively they  are  quite  as  numerous.  But 
only  in  one  instance  —  that  of  the  paper 
manufacturers  in  1901  —  has  a  trust  been 
effectively  reached  under  any  of  these  laws, 
because  it  'unduly'  increased  prices  to  con- 
sumers. In  not  a  single  instance  since  1889 
has  the  tariff  protection  on  a  single  article 
been  withdrawn  because  the  manufacture 
and  marketing  of  an  article  was  controlled 
by  a  trust.  Moreover,  judging  from  the 
[  172  ] 


APPENDIX   A 

official  report  of  a  discussion  at  the  last  an- 
nual conference  of  the  Canadian  Manufac- 
turers' Association,  the  Paper  Trust,  that 
was  in  trouble  under  Section  XVIII  in 
1901,  is,  as  regards  some  lines  of  its  busi- 
ness, as  flourishing  as  it  was  when  its  opera- 
tions brought  it  into  conflict  with  the  Anti- 
Trust  Law." 


[  173  ] 


APPENDIX  B 

THE  HOUSING  SITUATION: 
CAUSE  AND  CURE* 

"The  solution  of  the  housing  problem  of 
the  District  of  Columbia  goes  to  the  very 
foundation  of  the  original  theory  upon 
which  the  Federal  district,  'ten  miles 
square/  was  created. 

"The  fathers  planned  to  build  a  National 
Capital  in  an  isolated  spot,  free  from  local 
influences  of  commerce  and  politics,  where 
the  individuals  elected  and  appointed  to 
run  the  Government  could  function  calmly 
and  dispassionately. 

"Every  other  capital  in  the  world  but  one 
is  located  in  the  metropolis  of  its  country. 
Here  it  was  deliberately  determined  to  get 
away  from  cities,  and  have  nothing  in  the 
Capital  but  the  machinery  of  the  National 
Government. 

*  An  article  by  Oliver  P.  Newman,  former  Chairman  of 
the  District  of  Columbia  Commission;  Washington  Times, 
October  21,  1919. 

[  174  ] 


APPENDIX    B 

"What  the  originators  really  had  in  mind 
was  a  Federal  reservation,  like  an  army  post. 
They  went  so  far  as  to  lay  down,  in  the  Fed- 
eral Constitution,  that  Congress  should  have 
exclusive  jurisdiction  in  the  'ten  miles 
square';  meaning  that  the  Government 
should  be  the  exclusive  authority,  to  control 
the  District  and  run  it  as  was  best  for  the 
Government. 

"That  was  a  perfectly  sound  theory,  but  it 
was  not  carried  to  its  logical  conclusion.  To 
have  kept  the  District  a  Federal  reservation, 
where  Congress  would  always  be  the  un- 
questioned boss,  the  Government  should 
have  kept  title  to  the  land. 

"WHEN  IT  PERMITTED  THE  LAND  TO  PASS 
INTO  PRIVATE  OWNERSHIP  IT  TOOK  A  PART- 
NER, AND  HAS  HAD  TO  RECKON  WITH  THAT 
PARTNER  EVER  SINCE. 

"That's  the  reason  there's  a  housing  prob- 
lem in  Washington  now  —  a  problem  diffi- 
cult of  practical  solution.  Much  of  the  land 
is  owned  by  private  individuals  who,  natu- 
rally and  legally,  want  to  make  money  out 
of  it. 

"Because  they're  trying  to  make  money 
out  of  it,  the  average  resident  of  Washing- 
ton finds  his  rent  high  and  houses  and  apart- 
ments inadequate.  .  .  . 


APPENDIX    B 

"If  times  were  normal,  I  would  say  that  a 
proper  system  of  taxation,  whereby  a  man 
would  not  be  penalized  for  improving  his 
property  and  whereby  the  public  should  re- 
ceive in  taxes  the  value  which  the  public 
creates,  would  solve  the  problem  —  would 
automatically  produce  houses  for  as  many 
people  as  needed  them  at  prices  within  their 
reach. 

"But  times  are  NOT  normal,  and  at  such 
periods  the  Government  and  not  the  individ- 
ual should  bear  the  bulk  of  the  burden.  The 
law  of  supply  and  demand  must  be  forgot- 
ten. 

"The  theory  that  the  Government  should 
not  interfere  with  private  enterprise  must  be 
abandoned.  The  idea  that,  if  Uncle  Sam 
goes  into  private  business,  he  must  make 
money  out  of  it,  must  be  passed  by.  This 
must  be  remembered  and  observed: 

"THE   THOUSANDS   or   PEOPLE   HERE   IN 

WASHINGTON,  MANY  OF  THEM  DOING  THE 
WORK  OF  THE  GOVERNMENT,  MUST  HAVE  A 
HEALTHFUL  PLACE  TO  LIVE  WITHIN  THE 
LIMITS  OF  THEIR  ABILITY  TO  PAY. 

"In  the  present  emergency  I  can  see  but 

one  solution.    That  is  for  Government  to  go 

right  out,  frankly  and  on  a  big  scale,  and 

build  houses  and  apartments,  and  rent  them 

[  176  ] 


APPENDIX    B 

at  reasonable  rates,  even  if  such  action  in- 
volves financial  loss. 

"There  aren't  enough  houses  and  apart- 
ments in  town. 

"The  individual  can't  afford  to  build,  buy, 
or  pay  the  rents  that  new  property,  privately 
owned,  must  have. 

"Private  enterprise  probably  won't  pro- 
vide enough  space,  anyway,  even  at  high 
rentals. 

"Is  there  any  answer  except  for  Govern- 
ment to  step  in  and  do  the  job?" 


[  177  ] 


APPENDIX   C 

A  SOLUTION   OF   THE   HOUSING 

PROBLEM   IN  THE 

UNITED   STATES* 

BY    MILO  HASTINGS 

PART  I.    THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM 

THE  housing  plan  here  offered  has 
obvious  kinship  with  the  English  garden 
city.  It  is  differentiated  from  the  English 
plan  to  adapt  it  more  closely  to  American 
conditions  and  needs. 

The  American  possesses  no  overwhelming 
fondness  for  ancient  and  established  forms 
of  dwelling  architecture.  If,  in  our  house- 
building and  community-planning,  any 
practical  comforts  and  modern  conveniences 
be  sacrificed  to  the  ancient  European  cults 
of  rustic  beauty,  the  American  tenant  is 
going  to  repudiate  our  efforts  as  mere  ar- 
tistic foolery. 

*  One  of  the  prize-winning  theses  in  the  competition 
instituted  jointly  by  the  Journal  of  the  American  Insti- 
tute of  Architects  and  the  Ladies'  Home  Journal. 

£  178] 


APPENDIX    C 

The  American  does  possess  a  contrasting 
fondness  for  labor-saving  inventions  and 
"modern  improvements,"  and  places  a  value 
thereon  out  of  all  keeping  with  European 
standards.  He  wants  things  up-to-date,  and 
is  willing  to  pay  for  modern  features  of 
housing  conveniences  and  comforts  out  of 
all  proportion  to  their  actual  cost.  In  the 
Flagg  workingmen's  apartments,  in  New 
York,  the  belated  installations  of  baths  per- 
mitted a  raising  of  the  rents  on  a  scale  that 
paid  a  hundred  per  cent  on  the  cost  of  their 
installation. 

Nor  do  American  working  folk,  and  par- 
ticularly the  women,  take  kindly  to  those 
ancient  ideals  of  thrift  and  economy  that, 
in  song  and  story,  hover  about  the  lowly 
peasant's  cot.  They  want  neither  cot  nor 
cottages,  but  houses  and  bungalows.  They 
do  not  want  to  carry  market  baskets  nor  sit 
before  open  fires.  They  like  to  get  out  and 
travel  and  go  to  shows.  They  want  an  auto 
and  a  garage;  they  want  hot  water  and 
steam  heat,  a  telephone  and  goods  delivered 
— preferably  "in  the  rear." 

Since  the  American  scale  of  values  is  dif- 
ferent, we  should  translate  the  lessons  that 
Europe  has  to  teach  us  into  American 
terms,  and  plan  our  housing  so  as  to  give 
[  179  ] 


APPENDIX   C 

the  American  the  greatest  possible  meas- 
ure of  those  things  he  wants  and  is  willing  to 
pay  for. 

The  American  does  want  a  private  house 
and  suburban  or  country  life;  but  he  also 
wants  city  conveniences.  As  things  now 
stand,  it  is  difficult  to  give  him  both  at  a 
price  he  can  pay.  Our  problem  is  to  devise 
a  plan  that  will  give  the  worker  a  private 
house  and  garden,  together  with  cooperative 
utilities  and  services,  and  at  a  total  cost 
within  his  means. 

This  is  an  end  that  cannot  be  attained 
without  some  sacrifice  of  the  picturesque 
freedom  of  the  plotting  of  the  present  con- 
ventional garden  city.  There  is  no  intent 
here  to  discard  the  esthetic  values  of  artistic 
irregularity,  but  only  to  compromise  the 
ideals  of  the  landscapist  with  the  practical 
limitations  of  the  engineer. 

A  Street  That  Functions  Efficiently 

The  varied  ends  sought,  and  proportioned 
to  American  tastes,  can  be  most  economi- 
cally secured  by  building  a  series  of  detached 
houses  along  a  line  of  service  utilities.  Our 
present  street  is  such  a  line,  but  it  is  not  an 
efficient  line.  If  it  be  narrow,  or  the  houses 
[  180  ] 


APPENDIX    C 

be  set  too  near  the  street,  it  is  cramped  and 
ugly.  If  it  be  wide  and  spacious,  and  the 
houses  set  well  back,  it  is  unduly  expensive, 
and  the  total  amount  of  pavement  and  total 
length  of  digging  and  piping  to  carry  the 
utilities  into  the  house  is  too  great. 

We  can  gain  economy  by  a  specialization 
of  the  functions  of  the  street.  We  can 
broaden  the  street  that  is  to  be  the  front  of 
the  house  until  it  is  no  longer  a  street  but  a 
parkway.  We  can  concentrate  the  heavy 
traffic  and  service  utilities  at  the  rear  of  the 
house  until  it  narrows  down  to  the  one-way 
vehicle  track  made  of  two  concrete  rails  with 
concave  surfaces  fitted  to  the  gage  of  an 
ordinary  motor  vehicle.  The  construction 
of  this  "auto  railroad"  will  require  but  a 
small  part  of  the  material  needed  for  the 
modern  street,  yet  the  service  rendered  will 
be  more  efficient. 

Paralleling  this  track,  and  constructed  as 
a  part  of  it,  will  be  the  line  of  service-pipes 
and  cables.  The  minimum  list  will  include 
the  water-line,  the  sewer,  gas,  telephone, 
and  the  light  and  power  circuit.  The  sewer 
must  be  buried  in  the  ground  and  sloped  for 
gravity  flow.  Water-pipes  must  be  buried, 
not  only  to  prevent  freezing  but  to  cool  the 
water  in  summer.  Where  no  heating-line 


APPENDIX    C 

is  to  be  provided,  it  may  also  be  necessary 
to  bury  the  gas-pipes  to  keep  the  collected 
water  from  freezing.  The  wire  cables  may 
be  located  in  a  groove  on  the  side  of  the  con- 
crete rail,  and  so  be  more  available.  But  if 
central  heat  is  to  be  provided,  a  conduit 
made  of  sections  of  asphalted  concrete  boxes 
may  be  placed  above  the  ground-level.  By 
this  plan  it  will  be  possible  to  keep  insula- 
tion dry  and  there  will  be  less  heat  lost  to 
the  air  than  to  the  better  conductor,  the 
damp  ground.  Where  such  a  surface  con- 
duit is  used,  all  pipes  and  wires,  except 
water  and  sewage,  may  be  carried  therein. 
This  heat-carrying  conduit  will  pass  just 
beneath  the  floor  at  the  rear  of  the  house, 
and,  if  there  be  a  garage,  the  heating  con- 
duit may  also  pass  through  it  just  inside  the 
rear  wall.  Thus,  the  heat  radiation  from  the 
main  will  not  be  wholly  wasted. 

Eear  Streets  versus  Front  Streets 

This  compact  service-way  should  be  lo- 
cated at  the  immediate  rear  of  the  houses  and 
the  houses  aligned  thereto.  This  line  need 
not  be  rigidly  straight,  but  it  should  avoid 
unnecessary  windings  and  sharp  turns. 
While  rigidity  of  alignment  in  the  rear  is 
[  182  ] 


APPENDIX    C 

essential  to  efficiency,  in  the  front  there  is 
no  rigid  house  alignment.  We  avoid  the 
straight  and  narrow  way  of  the  city  street, 
not  by  winding  and  curving  it,  but  by  sub- 
stituting for  the  street  a  sufficiently  wide 
parkway  to  permit  of  variations  within  it- 
self. 

The  rear  service-line  is  for  utility  traffic. 
It  makes  direct  contact  with  the  rear  room 
of  the  house.  Here  all  goods  may  be  de- 
livered into  a  trap  or  chute  without  the  de- 
liveryman  alighting  from  his  car  —  often 
without  his  stopping.  Garbage  and  waste 
paper,  set  out  through  a  wall-trap,  are  col- 
lected with  like  dispatch.  The  car  on  such 
a  track  needs  no  guidance,  hence  the  extra 
man  now  often  required  may  be  dispensed 
with.  Such  superior  delivery  to  the  house, 
in  addition  to  the  direct  economy,  will  stimu- 
late all  manner  of  cooperative  effort.  Func- 
tions like  baking  and  laundering  should,  in 
such  a  community,  become  completely  cen- 
tralized. 

The  community  kitchen,  which  has  made 
great  strides  during  the  war,  requires  only 
a  more  efficient  system  of  house-delivery  to 
make  it  a  permanent  service  in  the  industrial 
community. 

With  all  modern  utilities  in  the  home  and 

[  183  ] 


APPENDIX    C 

this  aid  toward  the  centralization  of  the  few 
remaining  functions  of  housekeeping,  wo- 
men will  be  so  freed  from  home  labor  as  to 
greatly  increase  their  capacities  for  indus- 
trial labor  outside  the  home.  While  wo- 
man's participation  in  industry  is  not 
without  its  evils,  the  nation  must  find  other 
ways  of  correcting  these  evils  than  by  re- 
fusing to  accept  labor-saving  methods  of 
lightening  household  drudgery.  Opposing 
the  centralization  of  housekeeping  func- 
tions is  quite  as  stupid  as  the  opposition 
once  shown  to  linotypes  and  grain-binders. 

This  tradeway  or  service-road  is  not  for 
beauty  but  for  utility.  By  making  it  vir- 
tually an  automobile  railway,  speed  and  ser- 
vice will  be  enhanced.  By  more  efficient 
transportation  for  goods,  we  make  possible 
a  greater  decentralization  of  population  and 
gain  access  to  a  greater  area  of  land  for 
recreation  and  cultivation. 

As  we  cannot  have  service  without  an  in- 
trusive proximity  to  the  dwelling,  we  want 
this  service  concentrated  so  that  it  can  be 
better  hidden.  The  rear  of  the  house,  and 
often  a  garage,  together  with  a  garden- 
house  and  tool-shed,  will  half  enclose  this 
line.  We  have  but  to  connect  up  these  build- 
ings with  a  few  concrete  posts,  stretch  a 


APPENDIX    C 

substantial  woven-wire  mesh,  and  plant 
climbing  vines,  and  our  service  right  of  way 
is  fenced  off  as  securely  as  an  English  rail- 
way. The  house  door  into  the  traffic-way, 
required  only  for  the  delivery  of  large 
articles,  can  be  kept  bolted  from  the  out- 
side. Thus  child-life  will  be  safeguarded 
and  speed  may  be  unrestricted.  Access  to 
the  garden  lands  in  the  rear  would  be  by 
means  of  a  platform  extending  from  an 
upper  porch  out  over  the  narrow  service-way 
and  an  outer  stairway  descending  into  the 
garden  space  beyond. 

Gardens,  Parks,  and  Play-Spaces 

For  commuting  suburbanites  or  industrial 
workers,  the  garden-patches  should  not  be 
fenced.  A  narrow  strip  near  the  house  may 
be  reserved  for  outbuildings  and  for  a  few 
fruit  trees  or  perennial  crops,  like  aspara- 
gus. Leaving  the  remainder  of  the  garden 
land  unfenced  will  permit  of  economical 
cooperative  plowing.  Division  lines  may 
be  determined  by  sighting  through  between 
landmarks,  and  thus  wasteful  and  weed- 
breeding  f  encerows  may  be  avoided.  Where 
the  holdings  are  of  larger  size,  a  nearby 
strip  can  be  left  for  cooperative  plowing 
and  the  land  beyond  fenced  for  chicken- 
[  185  ] 


APPENDIX    C 

yards  and  cow-lots.  In  such  developments, 
many  tenants  would  require  the  smaller  gar- 
den holding  only,  and  the  larger  space  be- 
yond could  be  leased  to  those  desiring  them. 

As  the  concentration  of  houses  on  the 
service-line  is  essential  to  gain  cooperative 
utilities,  so  the  extension  of  the  land  in  the 
opposite  direction  will  gain  greater  areas  for 
cultivation. 

Our  logical  housing  unit  will  be  formed 
of  two  approximately  parallel  lines  of 
houses.  Connected  at  its  outer  end  by  the 
return  bend  of  the  service-line,  the  unit  will 
form  a  U.  At  the  open  end  of  this  U  is  the 
established  city,  or,  if  all  things  are  to  be 
new,  the  industrial  and  trading  area  of  the 
new  city.  The  inside  of  the  U  will  be  parked 
throughout  and  traversed  by  no  heavy  ser- 
vice traffic  but  only  by  such  walks  and  light 
roads  as  are  needed  for  recreational  pur- 
poses and  private  cars. 

Within  this  U,  with  its  park-like  and  non- 
commercial environs,  may  be  located  schools, 
clubs,  athletic  courts,  and  other  social  and 
recreational  institutions.  But  the  social 
value  of  this  land  will  not  depend  upon  its 
elaborate  equipment;  its  primary  purpose 
is  to  give  a  sense  of  room  and  freedom  and 
to  provide  ample  play-space  for  children. 
[  186  ] 


APPENDIX   C 

If  it  be  nothing  more  than  an  alternation  of 
groves  and  grass  lands,  with  an  occasional 
school,  it  will  well  serve  its  purpose  of  giving 
the  residents  a  free  recreational  common, 
which  is  often  absent,  even  in  suburbs  where 
all  land  except  the  street  is  fenced  off  as  pri- 
vate grounds. 

The  length  of  this  U  is  indefinite.  Where 
the  land  is  available  for  possible  later  ex- 
pansion, the  outer  end  of  the  U  should  not 
be  built  up  with  houses,  but  should  merely 
carry  the  service-way  and  utility  pipes 
which  may  be  moved  further  out  in  case  of 
expansion. 

Economies  in  Construction 

The  construction  of  the  houses  themselves, 
being  planned  and  built  in  considerable 
numbers,  will  gain  the  economies  due  to 
wholesale  building  operations.  In  the  re- 
cent Australian  rural  communities  these 
wholesale  economies  are  reported  to  have 
reduced  the  housing  costs  to  one-half  that  of 
individually  built  houses.  In  the  present 
plan,  the  cooperative  utilities  will  necessi- 
tate a  standardizing  of  heating  equipment 
and  similar  fixtures  that  will  show  the  usual 
economies  of  standardization.  Our  prog- 
[  187  ] 


APPENDIX    C 

ress  in  pouring  cement  houses  indicates 
further  possibilities  of  economy.  Such  econ- 
omies necessitate  similarity  in  the  finished 
houses.  We  accept  similarity  in  automo- 
biles because  of  economies,  and  there  is  no 
reason  why  we  should  not  accept  it  in 
houses.  But  if  the  whole  effect  of  the  house 
and  its  environs  is  cramped,  monotonous, 
and  ugly,  we  can  pay  too  great  a  price  for 
economy.  The  solution  is  to  accept  a  larger 
degree  of  repetition  in  house  design  and 
fittings  where  the  economies  are  greatest, 
and  to  secure  a  compensating  variety  and 
beauty  by  the  freer  use  of  land  in  the 
parkway. 

Decentralization  of  Population 

In  the  model  English  garden  city  of 
Letchworth  there  is  a  population  of  35,000 
on  4,500  acres,  or  about  two-thirds  of  an 
acre  per  family.  And  yet,  in  Letchworth, 
twelve  houses  are  permitted  per  acre,  which, 
with  a  lot  150  feet  in  depth,  would  mean 
only  24  feet  in  lot-width.  In  this  much- 
famed  English  model,  the  cramping  of 
houses  is  thus  permitted  in  the  town,  which 
is  then  surrounded  with  a  belt  of  muni- 
cipally owned  farms.  The  outermost  acre 
[  188  ] 


APPENDIX   C 

of  Letchworth  is  only  several  miles  from 
the  city  center.  Such  a  distance  can  be  ne- 
gotiated by  a  jitney  bus  in  ten  minutes  at  a 
cost  of  two  or  three  cents  per  passenger. 

We  can  well  afford  to  discard  this  Letch- 
worth  farm-belt  and  distribute  our  people 
over  the  whole  of  our  land.  After  allowing 
for  the  space  for  industrial  needs,  we  will 
have  a  land  area  a  little  better  than  a  half  an 
acre  per  family.  This  must  be  proportioned 
between  the  park  space,  the  building  and  pri- 
vate yard,  and  the  garden  space  in  the  rear. 
The  houses  on  the  two  sides  of  the  U  con- 
tribute equally  of  their  allotted  space  to  the 
central  parkway,  which  should  be  at  least 
200  feet  wide.  Allow  another  hundred  feet 
for  the  private  lawn  and  house-site  and  200 
feet  for  the  garden.  The  total  depth  is  thus 
400  feet,  which  will  result  in  a  lot-width  of 
60  feet. 

Central  Heat  and  Hot  Water 

This  is  a  far  greater  decentralization  than 
is  gained  in  the  English  garden  city,  yet  in 
order  to  have  central  heat  for  every  house, 
we  have  only  to  provide  60  feet  of  heating 
main.  We  have  not  done  this  thing,  but  the 
reasons  are  not  found  in  the  textbooks  of 
[  189  ] 


APPENDIX    C 

our  heating  engineers,  but  merely  in  our  un- 
social planning.  The  distribution  of  heat 
and  of  hot  water  for  bath  and  kitchen  use 
may  be  combined.  Such  water  could  be 
rapidly  circulated  by  pumps  and  the  pres- 
sure kept  up,  if  need  be,  by  a  relay  of  elec- 
trically driven  centrifugal  pumps  out  on  the 
line.  The  cost  of  power  for  such  forced  cir- 
culation should  be  more  than  met  by  the 
economies  in  coal  cost  from  more  efficient 
heating  at  the  central  plant,  and  thus  yield 
as  a  net  gain  the  advantages  of  the  cleanli- 
ness and  comfort  secured  and  of  labor  saved 
by  a  hot-water  supply  and  the  hot-water 
heat  within  the  home. 

The  original  cost  of  our  conduit  and  its 
piped  utilities  will  be  offset  by  the  elimina- 
tion of  individual  house-heating  systems  and 
the  saving  of  the  cost  of  a  cellar  beneath  the 
house.  The  present  uses  of  the  cellar  or 
basement  are  for  the  location  of  a  heating 
plant,  for  a  place  for  keeping  food  cool  in 
summer  or  to  prevent  its  freezing  in  winter, 
and,  in  some  modern  cottages,  as  a  location 
for  the  laundry.  In  the  present  plan  none  of 
these  needs  appear. 

Where  heat  may  be  piped,  so  can  any- 
thing else  that  flows  by  pipe  or  wire.  Sixty 
feet  of  vacuum  pipe  will  cost  less  than  an 
[  190  ] 


APPENDIX    C 

individual  vacuum  sweeper.  Why  should 
the  worker's  wife  sweep  with  a  broom  and 
dust  with  turkey  feathers  when  the  expendi- 
ture of  a  few  cents  a  month  for  electric 
energy  will  save  her  an  hour  of  work  a  day 
and  rid  the  house  of  dust-carrying  disease 
germs?  Again  I  am  constrained  to  believe 
our  nineteenth  century  sociology  and  not 
our  twentieth  century  engineering  is  at  fault. 
Why  should  we  go  on  building  workers' 
houses  with  a  hot-water  tank  on  a  kitchen 
range  and  put  bathing  on  an  uncertain 
schedule?  —  for  men  will  bathe  where  hot 
water  is  always  on  tap  and  will  not  where 
they  have  to  go  down  in  the  kitchen  and  fire 
up  and  wait  an  hour  in  order  to  get  a  hot 
bath.  Why  should  we  pile  up  the  responsi- 
bilities and  labor  of  decent  living  when  it  is 
cheaper  and  easier  to  make  living  easy? 

We  always  approach  this  problem  of 
housing  from  the  standpoint  of  an  eleventh- 
hour  rush  to  get  roofs  over  the  heads  of  a 
multitude  of  workers  that  the  sudden  growth 
of  some  great  factory  has  herded  into  in- 
sufficient quarters.  For  such  needs,  a  scale 
of  density  of  population  like  that  of  the 
garden  city  is  as  near  what  we  want  as  we 
can  now  determine  it.  But,  as  our  social 
control  over  industry  grows  more  intelli- 


APPENDIX    C 

gent,  we  will  cease  to  let  these  huge  fac- 
tories dictate  the  density  of  our  living  and 
begrudge  us  more  than  this  arbitrary  mini- 
mum of  soil. 

The  Workman  and  the  Land 

We  have  a  presentiment  —  and  all  Uto- 
pians that  ever  wrote  have  strengthened  it 
—  that  in  the  future  more  of  us  are  going 
to  possess  land-holdings  somewhere  between 
the  160-acre  farm  and  the  J-acre  garden,  and 
that  agriculture  and  industry  will  be  more 
closely  interwoven  than  now.  Time  and  in- 
telligence now  at  work  will  surely  intensify 
agriculture  and  teach  us  to  grow  more  food 
from  less  land ;  improved  transportation  will 
bring  us  closer  together  in  minutes  and  in 
dollars,  though  farther  apart  in  miles;  the 
distribution  of  social  utilities  will  make  life 
comfortable,  though  removed  from  the  city 
throngs. 

To  accomplish  these  ends  more  speedily, 
we  must  concentrate  our  houses  on  a  line  to 
gain  the  advantages  of  better  transporta- 
tion and  more  cooperative  utilities,  and  ex- 
tend our  land  back  in  strips  at  right  angles 
from  the  line  of  houses  to  gain  access  to 
more  soil.  The  maximum  of  house  con- 
centration is  the  continuous  house  of  the 
[  192  ] 


APPENDIX   C 

Chambless  Roadtown  plan;  the  minimum  is 
the  present  arrangement  of  farm-houses. 

There  is  no  absolute  standard  for  the  de- 
termination of  compromises  between  these 
extremes,  but  the  range  included  by  the  plan 
here  offered  (the  essential  idea  of  which  the 
writer  published  in  1909)  is  that  beginning 
with  the  detached  house  and  ending  with  the 
distance  at  which  it  ceases  to  be  feasible  to 
pipe  water.  Between  these  extremes  I  be- 
lieve may  be  found  the  most  acceptable  and 
economical  housing  plans  for  industrial  pop- 
ulation in  areas  where  it  is  feasible  to  pro- 
vide gardens,  and  also  for  those  intensive 
agricultural  communities  where  vegetable, 
fruit,  and  poultry  farming  are  the  chief  in- 
dustries. Within  this  range  of  population 
density  will  be  included  the  equivalent  of 
our  present  suburban  and  village  life  and 
all  of  our  plans  for  agricultural  holdings  in 
industrial  regions.  As  we  repudiate  our 
present  congested  metropolitan  life,  and  as 
the  wastful  processes  of  extensive  agricul- 
ture are  restricted,  this  middle  ground  in  the 
ratio  of  men  to  land  may  come  to  include 
a  major  portion  of  our  whole  people. 

Picture  now  our  plan  applied  to  a  semi- 
agricultural  development  with  holdings  of 
from  2  to  10  acres.  The  houses  can  be  spaced 

[  193  ] 


APPENDIX    C 

from  100  feet  to  100  yards  apart.  We  shall 
cease  to  fence  in  our  tradeway  and  shall 
probably  lose  our  piped  heat  and  vacuum, 
but  we  can  retain  a  superior  delivery  ser- 
vice and  our  electricity,  gas,  and  water  — 
perhaps  the  latter  with  enough  capacity  for 
garden  irrigation. 

Our  little  lands  will  extend  for  1,000  feet 
or  so  to  the  rear.  The  residents  who  are 
otherwise  engaged  will  retain  only  a  nearby 
garden-patch  and  sublet  the  rear  portion 
of  their  holdings  to  land-loving  neighbors. 
If  our  community  has  retained  the  U  forma- 
tion, there  will  be  from  fifty  to  a  hundred 
families  to  the  mile,  and  we  may  have  good 
schools,  social  clubs,  and  cooperative  recrea- 
tional facilities.  With  auto  bus  service  our 
people  may  go  5  to  10  miles  to  work  or  to 
trade  with  no  undue  expense  or  loss  of  time. 

But  this  last  picture  need  not  mark  the 
maximum  of  decentralization.  We  can  give 
up  the  central  parkway,  combine  our  pipe- 
and  transit-way  with  the  free  vehicle  road, 
and  alternate  our  houses  on  the  opposite 
sides,  place  them  100  yards  apart,  and  carry 
our  tilled  lands  back  a  mile,  and  our  mead- 
ows, small  grains,  and  pastures  another 
mile,  and  we  will  have  an  average  farm  size 
of  600  feet  by  2  miles  or  150  acres,  which  is 
[  194  ] 


APPENDIX   C 

entirely  too  much  for  the  fanner  of  the  fu- 
ture. Far  from  being  inefficient,  the  long 
field  of  such  a  farm  would  be  better  adapted 
to  economical  cultivation  than  the  square 
field,  for  less  time  and  space  are  wasted  at 
turns.  The  square  survey  of  American 
farms  is  unadapted  to  an  age  when  the  de- 
livery truck,  the  pipe-line,  and  the  power 
wire  mean  more  to  men  than  the  vaunted 
isolation  of  feudal  castle  or  plantation  home. 
By  applying  our  principle  of  the  line  con- 
centration of  living  to  our  farm-survey,  we 
would  secure,  economically,  good  roads,  elec- 
tric light,  rural  delivery  of  goods  from  city 
stores,  a  bus  line,  water,  sewerage,  and  gas 
to  cook  with  if  we  want  it,  and  neighbors 
just  out  of  earshot. 

So  much  to  show  that  there  is  really  no 
limit  to  the  application  of  the  principle,  but 
the  immediately  practical  application  is  not 
to  general  farming,  except,  perhaps,  to 
newly  reclaimed  lands.  The  most  urgent 
need  for  housing  is  for  our  industrial 
workers ;  and  our  aim  should  be  to  give  them 
as  much  land  as  they  will  use,  and  give  them 
also  a  detached  and  private  dwelling,  and 
yet  deny  them  none  of  the  utilities  avail- 
able in  apartment  or  flat. 

There  is  a  time,  on  Sunday  afternoons, 
[  195  ] 


APPENDIX   C 

when  we  appreciate  curved  drives  and  wind- 
ing paths,  and  for  our  play-place  and  play- 
time we  set  aside  the  parkway  in  front  of 
our  houses,  but,  in  building  the  houses  and 
supplying  them  with  service,  mere  beauty 
must  compromise  with  efficiency.  The  aris- 
tocrat lives  fronting  on  the  park  and  has  all 
goods  delivered  in  the  rear,  and  so  can  the 
democrat  if  he  will  quit  being  an  anarchist 
in  his  town-making  and  house-building. 

PAET  II.    THE  ECONOMIC  METHOD 
The  Menace  of  Landlordism* 

Our  existing  system  of  American  land- 
tenure  grew  out  of  our  plan  of  turning  over 
our  public  domain  on  easy  terms  to  land- 
owning farmers.  By  so  doing  we  thought 
to  establish  a  sound  and  enduring  demo- 
cratic tenure.  The  result  of  this  system,  in 
its  present  state  of  evolution,  is  that  the 
modest  fortunes  of  a  large  portion  of  our 
people  are  founded  on  the  unearned  incre- 
ment from  the  rise  in  the  price  of  real  estate, 
and  hence  it  is  extremely  difficult  for  us  as 

*  For  the  statistics  covering  the  growth  of  landlordism, 
and  the  diminution  of  home  ownership  in  the  United 
States,  the  reader  is  referred  to  "The  Housing  Problem 
in  War  and  In  Peace,"  published  by  the  Journal  of  the 
A.  1.  A. 

[196  ] 


APPENDIX    C 

a  democratic  people  to  now  repudiate  the 
system. 

But  our  much-lauded  and  fondly  wor- 
shipped land-tenure  system  is  not  an  endur- 
ing one.  It  is  the  favorite  criticism  of  mis- 
understood socialism  that  if  we  divided  the 
world's  wealth  equally  today  it  would  be  un- 
equally divided  by  tomorrow  night.  That 
is  what  is  happening  to  our  American  land 
system,  for  our  intended  democracy  of  pri- 
vate ownership,  founded  on  homesteading, 
is  gradually  but  surely  being  lost  through 
the  irregularities  of  inheritance,  the  rise  and 
fall  of  fortune,  the  increase  in  land-values 
and  the  big  fish  eating  up  the  little  ones. 
Landlordism  and  tenantry  is  the  sure  but 
inevitable  outcome. 

We  boast  that  our  own  democracy  means, 
not  equality,  but  equality  of  opportunity. 
But  there  can  be  no  equality  of  opportunity 
for  the  new-born  in  a  nation  where  lands  are 
no  longer  free  and  where  a  portion  of  the 
population  live  off  of  the  socially  created 
rental  values  of  land. 

Government  Control  Necessary  to  Prevent 
Congestion  and  Slums 

We  can  go  on  dodging  the  issue  and  leav- 
ing the  disinherited  unborn  to  right  it  as  they 
[  197  ] 


APPENDIX    C 

may.  But  while  we  may  not  be  ready  to 
apply  a  land  reform  to  our  general  farm 
holdings,  the  time  is  at  hand  when  the  land 
speculator  can  no  longer  be  allowed  to  con- 
gest our  cities  and  absorb  the  surplus  earn- 
ings of  our  workers  by  the  increment  of  land 
rentals.  If  we  would  extend  towns  and 
cities  or  build  new  communities  on  a  socially 
conscious  plan,  there  is  no  use  going  about 
the  business  except  on  some  basis  of  federal, 
state,  municipal  or  community  land  owner- 
ship which  will  save  for  the  community  the 
wealth  the  community  will  create. 

Under  the  urge  of  war,  England,  goaded 
by  a  land  situation  worse  than  our  own, 
achieved  a  sudden  radicalism  which  goes 
further  than  we  may  desire  to  go.  The  land 
for  English  industrial  war  towns  was  not 
only  condemned  at  pre-war  prices  by  the 
Government,  but  provision  was  made  that 
adjacent  lands  might  thereafter  be  con- 
demned at  pre-war  prices.  A  fairer  plan 
would  be  to  give  the  public  agencies  active 
in  housing  enterprises  the  right  to  condemn 
the  lands  needed  at  present  values,  and  the 
right  to  condemn  further  lands  when  the 
need  arises  at  values  to  be  determined  by 
their  worth  at  the  time  the  project  was 
founded,  plus  such  ratio  of  increment  in 
[  198  ] 


APPENDIX   C 

value  as  the  regional  or  state  records  show 
as  having  accrued  in  lands  of  similar  type 
but  not  effected  by  proximity  to  industrial 
communities. 

Who  Shall  Build  Our  New  Communities? 

But  we  must  not  only  decide  what  to  do 
but  who  is  to  do  it.  Town-planning  by  in- 
dividual private  enterprise  is  ruled  out  be- 
cause it  breeds  congestion  and  slums.  Town- 
planning  by  private  development  companies 
may  be  fairly  satisfactory  for  the  middle- 
class  suburbanites,  but  it  has  utterly  failed 
to  properly  house  our  workers.  Town- 
building  by  industrial  corporations,  who  are 
forced  into  such  enterprises  by  the  necessity 
of  housing  their  workers,  is  somewhat  more 
efficient  and  is  the  prevailing  method  in 
present-day  building.  Such  corporations 
employ  the  best  of  our  town-planners  and 
small-house  architects,  and  these  men  work 
from  the  employer's  point  of  view.  Comfort 
and  efficiency  for  labor  they  consider.  But 
to  build  up  communities  wherein  the  land- 
lord and  employer  are  one  and  the  same  cor- 
poration is  to  accentuate  and  perpetuate  our 
present  overgrown  industrial  feudalism.  De- 
mocracy will  not  thrive  in  these  corporation 

[  199  ] 


APPENDIX    C 

towns  where  the  water  from  the  taps  and 
from  the  eaves  is  flavored  alike  with  steel  or 
rubber,  or  shredded  wheat  biscuits,  or  a  cer- 
tain brand  of  soap. 

But  somebody  must  be  the  landlord;  if 
not  the  private  speculator  or  the  industrial 
corporation,  then  it  must  be  the  government. 
But  what  government?  Federal,  perhaps; 
state  maybe;  best  of  all,  the  local  govern- 
ment of  the  district.  The  community  should 
own  itself.  The  unearned  increment  must 
pour  into  some  pocket,  and  if  it  be  the  pocket 
of  the  community,  then  taxes  may  be  deleted 
and  the  community  enriched  beyond  the 
dreams  of  publicans. 

For  the  expansion  of  existing  municipali- 
ties, the  right  of  the  eminent  domain  of  the 
city  must  be  extended,  not  only  to  its  streets 
and  rails,  its  pipes  and  wires,  but  to  its 
houses,  yards,  and  gardens.  Nor  should 
this  expanded  right  of  domain  be  confined 
by  existing  corporation  limits.  If  we  would 
solve  the  house  problem,  we  cannot  wait 
until  the  adjacent  rural  region  becomes  half 
urban;  we  must  have  power  to  reach  out 
into  rural  territory  and  do  our  planning  and 
start  our  building  on  fresh  ground  before 
private  suburban  development  ruins  all  hope 
of  doing  it  well. 

[  200  ] 


APPENDIX   C 

The  Need  for  Broad  Planning  Programs 

The  sharp  political  line  of  demarcation 
between  city  and  country  is  a  serious  diffi- 
culty in  the  development  of  semi-rural  com- 
munities. No  such  line  exists  in  the  nature 
of  social  or  industrial  life.  As  it  is  at  the 
very  point  where  town  meets  country  that 
our  greatest  opportunity  exists,  we  will  need 
some  well-wrought  plan  of  cooperation  be- 
tween the  municipal  and  the  adjacent  rural 
government.  Such  developments  cannot 
always  be  left  to  mutually  jealous  local  gov- 
ernments, but  will  require  oversight  by  the 
state  to  permit  of  harmonious  town-  and 
country-planning.  In  such  localities  it  may 
prove  necessary  to  create  new  communities 
occupying  a  portion  of  both  the  old  city  and 
adjacent  rural  territory.  Such  areas  might 
be  incorporated  in  the  old  city,  with  local 
autonomy  in  the  business  of  land  proprietor- 
ship and  housing  control. 

Our  government  authorization  of  an  emi- 
nent domain  for  housing  must  also  be  ex- 
tended to  new  communities  that  may  be  cre- 
ated apart  from  existing  cities.  For  the  in- 
itiation of  such  new  efforts  we  cannot  depend 
upon  the  initiative  of  centralized  govern- 
mental authority.  The  initiative  is  more 
[  201  ] 


APPENDIX    C 

likely  to  come  from  enterprising  citizens  or 
industrial  leaders.  But  the  overseeing  gov- 
ernment must  have  power  to  check  and  su- 
pervise such  ambitious  efforts.  As  the 
Reclamation  Service  now  selects  from 
among  endless  local  claimants  the  regions  to 
be  improved  and  made  into  farms,  so  we 
must  have  a  state  or  national  agency  which 
will  pass  upon  new  town  projects  and  ex- 
tend authority  where  worth  is  found. 

Money  and  Credit 

In  securing  the  funds  for  building  we  will 
have  a  like  need  of  such  aid  from  the  larger 
political  organization.  In  the  reclamation 
projects,  the  acquisition  of  the  land  is  the 
smaller  half  of  the  problem.  The  Govern- 
ment finances  the  improvements  and  se- 
cures the  return  of  the  funds  invested  from 
the  wealth  thereby  created.  In  like  manner, 
the  nation  or  state  must  finance  the  public 
utilities  and  workers'  dwellings  of  new  indus- 
trial communities  or  we  will  make  slow 
progress  with  our  housing  problems. 

This  is  a  safe  investment  for  Government 

credit.    To  issue  Government  bonds  to  drain 

swamps  or  build  cities  is  not  to  pile  up  debts 

like  those  of  war,  but  is  merely  a  govern- 

[  202  ] 


APPENDIX   C 

mentally  directed  cooperative  investment  in 
real  estate  securities.  Private  capitalists 
would  otherwise  finance  these  ventures  on 
speculation  —  some  to  make  and  some  to 
lose.  Through  the  agencies  of  Government 
credit,  individuals  pool  their  capital,  their 
gains  and  losses,  so  that  all  will  make  4  per 
cent.  As  long  as  we  need  houses  to  make 
our  workers  productive,  bonding  the  Gov- 
ernment to  pay  for  these  houses  means  add- 
ing to  national  prosperity. 

Self -owning  Communities 

The  land  bought,  and  the  houses  built  by 
Government  funds  will  be  owned  by  the 
community,  the  Government  holding  the 
mortgage.  Before  the  war  we  would  prob- 
ably have  sold  out  the  homes  to  the  workers 
on  easy  payments  and  so  made  trouble  for 
the  next  generation.  But  the  war  has  in- 
creased our  social  reach  into  the  future,  and 
we  can  now  advocate  a  permanent  commu- 
nity ownership.  The  Government  bonds 
may  be  retired  in  twenty  or  fifty  years  — 
the  time  is  not  particular,  though  the  com- 
munity should  take  the  ultimate  risk  of  its 
own  life  or  death,  for  it  is  the  community 
that  will  be  responsible. 
[  203  ] 


APPENDIX    C 

The  community  will  own  itself  and  will 
rent  its  houses  on  long-time  or  indefinite 
leases  to  its  citizens.  The  rent  figure  will 
include  interest  on  the  cost,  the  upkeep,  and 
operation  of  the  town  as  a  whole,  and,  until 
the  bonds  are  retired,  the  sinking  fund  for 
such  retirement.  The  citizen  will  own  his 
own  home  for  all  the  practical  purposes  of 
vine  and  fig  tree,  and,  if  you  please,  of  an 
ancestral  estate.  The  most  prickly  thorns  on 
the  rose  of  inheritance  are  removed  when  we 
do  away  with  private  property  in  the  un- 
earned increment. 

Whatever  be  the  relations  worked  out  be- 
tween our  complex  national,  state,  city  and 
community  organizations,  the  new  commu- 
nities that  are  based  on  the  community  own- 
ership of  land  and  houses  should  have  the 
largest  possible  degree  of  local  autonomy. 
The  political  problems  of  such  a  community 
are  different  from  those  existing  under  the 
old  system  of  land  tenure,  and  the  affairs  of 
such  communities  are  not  likely  to  be  fairly 
administered  by  outside  officials  influenced 
by  the  old  system.  The  new  communities 
will  form  centers  of  a  more  social  demo- 
cratic life.  If  they  prove  efficient  they  will 
grow  and  expand,  and  so  they  in  time  recast 
the  social  structure  of  the  whole  nation. 
[  204  ] 


APPENDIX   C 

Present  danger  lies  in  subjecting  them  too 
closely  to  outside  paternalistic  influence  and 
thus  checkmating  their  opportunity  to  prove 
their  actual  worth  in  competition  with  the 
old  system  based  on  the  private  ownership 
of  land. 

[NOTE.  —  Among  other  references,  the  reader's  atten- 
tion is  called  to  the  new  Housing  Bill  in  Canada,  a  sum- 
mary of  which  appears  in  this  issue;  to  the  new  Housing 
Law  in  Australia,  likewise  summarized  in  this  number,  and 
to  the  pending  law  in  England,  of  which  many  references 
have  been  published  in  previous  issues  of  the  Journal.  The 
English  Law  is  not  yet  on  the  statute  books,  and  it  is  gen- 
erally conceded  that  it  will  be  wholly  ineffective  in  meeting 
the  present  grave  crisis,  unless  it  be  accompanied  by  a  Land 
Acquisition  Act  that  will  permit  the  taking  of  land  at  its 
pre-war  value,  and  not  compel  the  Local  Authorities  to  buy 
it  at  its  present  greatly  inflated  value.  EDITOR.] 


[  205  ] 


APPENDIX  D 

A  SOLUTION  OF  THE  HOUSING 

PROBLEM  IN   THE 

UNITED  STATES* 

BY  ROBERT  ANDERSON   POPE 

I.   THE  SOCIAL  PURPOSE 

OF  the  innumerable  grand  projects  for 
human  betterment  that  have  witnessed  man's 
resolute  faith  in  his  own  future,  the  larger 
number  have  never  attained  realization. 
Their  main  substance  was  a  generous  imagi- 
nation, their  chief  animus  a  high-spirited 
altruism.  Detached  from  the  basic  facts  of 
the  nature  of  mankind,  and  unrelated  to 
other  projects  of  reform,  they  have  remained 
for  the  most  part,  inspiring  ideals  —  chiefly 
potent  in  keeping  alive  man's  discontent 
and  aspiration.  Through  this  experience 
we  have  become  too  fearful  of  fundamental 
reforms  and  yet  it  is  only  through  funda- 

*  One  of  the  two  prize-winning  theses  in  the  competition 
for  a  solution  of  the  housing  problem  in  the  United  States, 
as  conducted  by  the  Journal  of  the  American  Institute  of 
Architects  and  the  Ladies'  Home  Journal, 

[  206  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

mental  reforms  that  we  shall  produce  the 
realization  of  our  aims. 

There  are  no  facts  in  creation  so  real  and 
important  as  the  facts  related  to  human  na- 
ture; although,  like  the  air  we  breathe,  we 
are  unconscious  of  them,  nevertheless  they 
are  constantly  and  powerfully  operative.  If 
respected  and  capitalized,  they  will  prodi- 
giously reinforce  any  enterprise ;  if  promised 
satisfaction  and  fulfillment,  they  will  ensure 
success.  They  reckon  ill  who  neglect  them. 
External  power  or  material  glory  is  never 
safe  if  these  forces,  which  make  up  the  in- 
herent qualities  of  mankind,  are  placated 
and  unemployed. 

It  is,  then,  the  fundamental  and  universal 
nature  of  man  himself  which  must  control 
every  successful  enterprise  of  human  well- 
being,  and  we  must  therefore  acknowledge 
the  authority  of  man's  deepest  needs  and 
capacities,  and,  in  the  light  of  the  essential 
characteristics  of  human  nature,  attempt 
to  provide  that  setting  which  will  insure 
the  development  of  an  ample  and  humane 
life.  This  is  primarily  the  field  of  the  phil- 
osopher and  the  psychologist,  and  the  essen- 
tial character  of  human  nature,  in  its  major 
outlines,  has  already  been  made  clear  and 
sure  by  philosophers  like  Plato,  Aristotle, 
[  207  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

and  Kant,  down  to  the  modern  psycholo- 
gists of  the  Freudian  school ;  and  it  is  upon 
their  conclusions,  then,  that  we  intend  to 
base  and  draw  up  herein  our  new  Bill  of 
Rights. 

Man  is  an  animal  and  on  the  bodily  basis 
rests  all  chance  for  a  really  satisfactory  life. 
The  barest  physical  necessities  of  man's 
system  call  for  air,  light,  protection,  space 
for  movement,  opportunities  for  cleanliness, 
and  so  forth.  There  is  no  possibility  of  men 
being  really  themselves  except  in  a  friendly 
physical  environment  that  promotes  a 
healthy,  normal,  communal  life.  Though 
in  fact  the  proposition  is  too  trite  to  be 
argued,  the  force  and  authority  of  it  are 
often  overlooked  —  and  overtly  this  essen- 
tial right  has  been  and  is  daily  outraged  on 
a  vast  scale.  The  medieval  and  puritanical 
scorn  of  the  physical  life  has  been  a  profit- 
able dogma  for  the  exploiter,  and  a  so-called 
Christian  civilization,  motivated  by  a  con- 
cern for  individual  profit,  and  the  obligation 
of  a  world  to  come,  have  permitted  endless 
abuse  of  man's  right  as  a  physical  being. 

Although  it  is  true  that  man  is  an  animal, 

he  is  something  more;  and  the  cry  that  man 

shall  not  live  by  bread  alone  is  a  recognition 

of  the  truth  that  only  in  the  f ulfillment  of 

[  208  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

his  mental  and  spiritual  functions  can  man 
find  the  good  life. 

The  most  universal  character  of  normal 
mental  process  is  the  effort  towards  inte- 
gration. We  give  things  names,  we  regis- 
ter impressions,  we  seek  to  establish 
relations  of  resemblance,  continuity,  and 
dependence.  We  are  constantly  desig- 
nating, classifying,  relating  every  minute  of 
our  waking  lives  —  trying  vainly,  blindly, 
to  impart  some  order  and  control  into  the 
sorry  scheme  of  things.  That  which  is  un- 
related is  mysterious,  painful,  baffling,  and 
even  terrifying.  The  Freudian  method  of 
research  has  shown  that  the  lack  of  the  inte- 
grated life  is  responsible  for  many  of  our 
pathological,  as  well  as  our  psychological, 
disabilities;  and  that  the  right  life  involves 
a  complete  integration  which  shall  include 
within  a  harmonious  whole  man's  subcon- 
scious and  conscious  selves. 

This  compelling  force  of  human  progress 
is  the  essential  quality  of  the  mind  with  its 
unconscious,  persistent,  and  universal  pres- 
sure in  the  direction  of  coherence,  order,  and 
spirituality.  This  is  the  elan  vitale.  As  the 
acorn,  by  its  inherent  structure,  predeter- 
mines the  ultimate  character  of  the  oak  tree, 
so  the  elan  vitale  predetermines  the  progress 
[  209  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

of  society;  and  it  is  that  fundamental  char- 
acter of  the  mind  and  spirit  that  we  must 
recognize  as  the  medium  to  which  it  is  neces- 
sary to  attach  all  our  programs  and  reforms. 

One  of  the  most  important  characteristics 
of  mankind  which  this  integration  must 
recognize  is  that  of  the  creative  impulse 
which  is  inherent  to  all  men.  Probably  no 
other  factor  has  been  so  outraged  and  denied 
by  modern  industrialism.  The  modern 
town  must  provide  some  way  which,  in  the 
end,  will  accomplish  the  freedom  of  the 
workers  to  express  this  powerful  impulse  in 
forms  of  creative  achievement. 

Another  phase  of  human  need  which  must 
be  recognized  is  the  complexity  of  man's 
talents.  Modern  industrialism  has  disre- 
garded this,  to  the  serious  detriment  of  so- 
ciety, concentrating,  as  it  has,  the  whole 
energies  of  a  human  being  on  tasks  that  util- 
ize but  a  trifling  phase  of  his  inherent  ca- 
pacities, while  leaving  the  others  cramped 
and  impoverished.  The  price  of  a  policy 
which  so  disregards  the  varied  capacities  of 
every  individual  may  be  merely  a  dreary, 
melancholy  life  for  one  poor  group  of 
workers ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  outraged  hu- 
man nature  may  assert  itself,  as  it  has  in  the 
past  and  still  continues  to  do,  through  more 
[  210  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

or  less  criminal  deeds  of  violence  and  excite- 
ment. Gambling,  drunkenness,  sex  morbid- 
ity, reckless  sabotage,  are  but  some  of  the 
ways  in  which  a  cramped  nature  is  meeting 
this  phase  of  modern  industrial  life. 

Among  the  other  major  inherent  charac- 
teristics of  mankind  for  which  provision 
must  be  made  are  the  herd  or  social  instinct, 
the  spirit  of  freedom,  the  spirit  of  play,  and 
the  love  of  the  beautiful.  A  brief  amplifica- 
tion of  these  characteristics  is  necessary  in 
order  to  later  disclose  what  town  planning 
and  housing  technique  must  be  devised  to 
comply  with  these  fundamental  require- 
ments of  human  nature  which  we  have  ac- 
cepted as  authoritative  for  our  direction. 

The  herd  or  social  instinct  is  the  correla- 
tive of  the  instinct  for  self-preservation  — 
gregariousness  is  just  as  ultimate  as  acquis- 
itiveness. Man  is,  indeed,  as  Aristotle  has 
said,  preeminently  a  social  being.  The  in- 
dividual man  has  value  in  life  only  as  a  social 
complex.  From  the  social  whole  he  has  de- 
rived his  language,  traditions,  customs.  To 
that  he  constantly  appeals  —  in  cooperation 
alone  can  he  do  his  work  or  find  his  com- 
pletest  satisfaction.  It  is  not  merely  that 
our  material  existence  depends  upon  society, 
our  food,  clothing,  shelter,  education,  pro- 
[2UJ 


APPENDIX   D 

tection;  it  is  rather  that  the  very  quality  of 
our  minds  is  social.  Solitude  is  the  most 
cruel  form  of  punishment.  To  be  hated  is 
almost  preferable  to  being  neglected.  A  hu- 
man being,  in  so  far  as  he  is  more  than  a 
chemical  and  physical  complex,  can  be  de- 
fined only  in  terms  of  social  relations.  He 
has  advanced  out  of  wildness  and  weakness 
by  virtue  of  his  infinite  capacity  for  coopera- 
tion, for  mutual  aid. 

It  was  this  quality  which  Prince  Kropot- 
kin  showed  to  be  the  dominating  surviving 
factor  in  pre-historic  man  —  a  factor  which 
involved  the  substitution  of  tribal  property 
for  individual  property;  and  which  he  tells 
us  resulted,  in  the  prehistoric  tribe,  in  a  qual- 
ity of  life,  idyllic  in  its  completeness  and 
beauty,  and  far  more  Christian  than  any- 
thing we  know  of  in  the  world  today. 

Without  the  opportunity  for  association 
and  cooperation,  man  becomes  morbid,  mel- 
ancholy, hateful.  He  needs  to  give  and  to 
receive  sympathy  according  to  the  cosmic 
law  of  love  and  self-sacrifice;  to  share  and 
undertake  with  other  human  beings  all  man- 
ner of  enterprises  and  activities.  Only  in 
social  contact  can  he  feel  himself  a  real  hu- 
man being  or  ever  quite  truly  know  his  own 
character.  At  the  basis  of  all  great  societies 
[  212  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

there  have  been  especially  close  cooperative 
units :  The  Greek  state ;  the  Hindu  caste,  and 
ryotwar;  the  Chinese  family;  the  Japanese 
or  Scotch  clan;  the  Russian  mir;  the  Renais- 
sance cities ;  the  American  state  and  the  New 
England  town  meetings. 

Civilization  has  lost  most  of  this  fine  in- 
herent spirit  of  cooperation  and  in  its  loss 
has  paid  dearly.  The  long  and  brutal  fight 
that  laborers  have  had  for  even  free  asso- 
ciation is  a  sad  story  in  the  history  of  hu- 
man oppression.  Denied  the  elemental 
right  of  free  cooperation,  it  is  not  surprising 
that,  when  the  long-denied  power  and  ex- 
hilaration that  come  from  association  were 
discovered,  they  were  for  some  time  put  to 
primitive  and  imprudent  use.  From  every 
quarter  of  the  globe  and  every  angle  of  hu- 
man experience  comes  overwhelming  testi- 
mony to  the  magnetic  and  irresistible  power 
of  the  spirit  of  cooperation.  The  mysterious 
and  stubborn  persistence  of  the  Bolsheviki 
is  due  primarily  to  the  fact  that  they  have 
capitalized  a  vast  power  in  the  instinct  for 
human  brotherhood  —  a  power  which  a  com- 
placent western  civilization  ignores  at  its 
peril.  It  is  a  vital,  universal,  essential  hu- 
man trait.  It  demands  fulfillment  on  both 
a  large  and  a  small  scale.  It  must  not 
[213] 


APPENDIX   D 

merely  be  vast  and  mechanical,  as  a  great 
army  —  it  must  also  be  intimate,  personal, 
a  daily  opportunity  in  all  lives.  So  precious 
is  this  human  value  of  brotherhood  and 
solidity  that  war  has  often  been  defended  on 
the  ground  that,  despite  its  infinite  anguish, 
it  recovers  for  a  distracted  civilization  the 
precious  unity  which  an  atomistic,  scientific 
industrialism  has  shattered. 

The  love  of  freedom  is  fully  recognized  as 
a  universal  and  powerful  character  of  the 
nature  of  mankind  and  needs  to  be  stressed 
but  little,  yet  it  is  so  potent  that  full  consid- 
eration must  be  given  to  it  by  the  town  cre- 
ator. Modern  life  has  imposed  upon  the 
original  flexible  human  spirit  a  rigid,  me- 
chanical order,  itself  artificial,  and,  despite 
man's  amazing  adaptability,  in  the  long  run 
injurious.  Time  is  divided  into  pieces;  we 
stretch  our  lives  on  Procrustean  beds  of 
clocks,  calendars,  routine,  programs,  insti- 
tutions —  in  short,  a  vast,  dispiriting,  clank- 
ing machinery  compels  us  at  every  moment. 
Spontaneity,  verve,  adventure,  imagination 
are  held  rigid  in  iron  bands  so  that  the  mor- 
bid and  violent  become  the  only  accessible 
substitutes  for  a  free  and  natural  play  of 
will  and  fancy. 

Once  released  from  uncongenial  environ- 
[214  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

ment  and  all  really  artificial  limitations,  the 
human  spirit  tends  to  develop  along  the  lines 
of  its  own  well-being.  Its  ultimate  ideals  are 
present  as  driving,  animating  forces,  within 
it  at  all  times,  however  concealed.  They  nat- 
urally and  powerfully  predetermine  growth 
in  the  right  direction.  This  is  not  senti- 
mental altruism,  but  facts  of  biology,  his- 
tory, and  psychology.  We  are  not  arguing 
for  dispensing  with  discipline  or  training, 
but  simply  that,  if  environment  is  provided 
with  that  which  is  at  all  congruous  with 
man's  native  requirements,  his  own  infinite 
passion  for  perfection  asserts  itself  — 
slowly  perhaps,  but  triumphantly.  Man's 
infinite  perfectibility  and  natural  disposi- 
tion to  excellence  is  one  of  the  profoundest 
truths  in  the  universe  and  the  one  thing  that 
makes  any  form  of  slavery  outrageous  and 
intolerable. 

In  accordance  with  this  thesis  we  must  not 
impose  a  dogmatic  scheme  upon  the  future 
town.  As  we  believe  in  the  spirit  of  free- 
dom, we  must  provide  scope  for  it.  Our 
town  must  be  so  planned  that  social  and  in- 
dustrial innovations  and  adjustments  are 
both  feasible  and  easy.  The  town  planner 
is  only  providing  the  skeleton,  the  frame- 
work, the  technique.  Each  age  must  fashion 
[215  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

its  own  order  of  city  as  well  as  each  people, 
and  it  must  be  expressive  of  their  own  in- 
terests, adapted  to  their  own  needs.  At  best 
we  can  give  the  present  order  its  most  so- 
cially helpful  community  plans  by  striving 
to  escape  cramping  finality. 

The  so-called  political  freedom  which  men 
think  they  have  enjoyed  has  become  but  the 
sop  of  industrialism,  through  which  the  at- 
tention of  the  workers  has  been  diverted 
from  the  fact  of  the  slavery  of  the  wage  sys- 
tem. That  this  situation  cannot  long  ob- 
tain, involving  as  it  does  the  denial  of  this 
enormously  potent  human  craving,  is  evi- 
dent by  the  world-wide  fomenting  spirit  of 
unrest.  This  is  well  understood  by  thinking 
men  everywhere,  who  know  that  the  conse- 
quences of  continued  frustration  of  this  hu- 
man need  will  be  measured  in  the  blood  and 
turmoil  of  revolution.  But  if  men  arise  who 
can  lead  us  to  an  industrial  democracy  which 
is  a  real  freedom,  then  we  shall  progress  by 
the  peace  of  evolution  rather  than  by  the 
strife  of  revolution. 

The  town  creator  can,  as  will  be  shown, 
make  large  contribution  to  the  cause  of  in- 
dustrial freedom  and  thereby  of  peaceful 
evolution,  by  the  technique  which  he  pro- 
vides for  this  purpose  in  his  town  plan. 
[  216  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

The  spirit  of  play  is  another  basic  need 
of  a  full  and  integrated  life,  provision  for 
which  must  be  made  by  the  town  creator, 
since  man  cannot  live  by  work  alone,  all  our 
homilistical  industrialists  to  the  contrary. 
Even  the  lower  order  of  animals  play,  and  a 
spontaneous  expression  of  man's  personality 
and  emotion  is  a  birthright,  which  if  stolen  or 
thrown  away,  must  now  be  restored. 
Whether  in  sports  or  avocational  hobbies, 
the  worker  must  have  full  opportunity  for 
some  purely  recreational  activities.  They 
give  zest  to  life,  and,  like  nothing  else,  they 
unify  the  disorganized  and  illy  balanced  life. 
The  town  planner  must  be  fertile  and  in- 
genious in  devising  ways  and  means  for  the 
expression  of  this  vital  instinct. 

The  love  of  the  beautiful,  like  the  other 
major  instincts  of  human  kind,  must  be  ac- 
corded fullest  opportunity  of  expression 
and  enjoyment  if  life  in  its  finest  sense  is  to 
be  completely  realized,  whether  it  be  in  his 
habitation,  his  work,  or  his  place  of  recrea- 
tion. For  it  has  inevitably  an  unconscious 
as  well  as  a  conscious  influence  on  the  qual- 
ity of  his  life,  making  it  always  better  and 
sweeter.  By  this  is  not  meant  the  superim- 
posed kind  of  beauty  expressed  through  the 
term  "City  Beautiful,"  or  some  haphazard 
[217  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

irrelevant  trimmings  in  the  way  of  parks 
and  fa9ades  introduced  as  an  afterthought 
indulgence  of  prosperity.  Beauty  is  not 
some  superimposed  ornamentation.  It  is  a 
quality  of  one  coherent  vision  that  lives 
through  all  its  parts.  The  true  town  beauti- 
ful must  be  a  unified  whole,  planned  as  a 
whole  with  respect  to  all  of  its  features,  ful- 
filling in  a  carefully  interrelated  scheme  one 
coherent  character.  For  such  a  town  beauti- 
ful gives  fullest  scope  to  the  instinct  of  love 
of  the  beautiful  and  is  fit  body  to  the  true 
community-soul,  for  this  esthetic  unity  which 
it  fulfills  is  a  counterpart  of  the  ethical  and 
logical  unity  of  the  community.  Both  are 
a  complex  whole  of  many  parts.  Both  fo- 
cus on  a  central  plan  composed  of  many  in- 
terests. Both  hold  together  a  dominant, 
persuasive  character. 

This,  then,  in  the  largest  outline,  is  the 
social  purpose  our  scheme  is  designed  to 
serve  —  to  provide  the  human  flesh  and 
spirit  with  an  opportunity  for  the  objec- 
tive realization  of  its  own  deepest  needs  and 
capacities:  to  create  a  community  in  which 
health  and  happiness  shall  be  natural  and  in- 
evitable; where  our  basic  demands  for  an 
orderly,  integrated  life  find  scope  for  the 
exercise  and  fulfillment  of  all  specifically 
[  218  ] 


APPENDIX  D 

human  functions;  where  variety  and  spon- 
taneity relieve  order  and  regulation;  where 
freedom  of  every  essential  kind  is  protected 
and  nourished;  where  the  vital  instinct  for 
cooperation  and  community  loyalty  is  stim- 
ulated and  directed;  where  life  for  its  own 
sake  is  worth  living.  For  human  life  in 
itself  is  infinitely  precious,  not  because  it 
leads  to  something  other  than  itself,  as  when 
beings  are  ground  into  dividends,  but 
because  there  are  no  real  values  beyond 
spiritual  values.  Everything  else  is  instru- 
mental to  the  perfection  of  the  human  spirit, 
and  our  general  blindness  to  the  truth  is  the 
most  fearful  indictment  of  our  time.  Man 
is  an  end  —  not  a  means.  To  employ  him 
as  a  means  merely,  as  if  inert  material,  is 
an  inhuman  reversal  of  the  common  truth. 
We  must  build  towns,  therefore,  not  where 
the  worker  is  stored  overnight  for  fresh 
production  of  wealth  on  the  morrow,  but 
where  he  can  live  constantly  the  distinctively 
human  life;  where,  in  short,  nothing  less 
than  the  ideal  of  Aristotle  may  prevail,  that 
"a  city  is  a  place  where  men  live  common 
lives  for  noble  ends." 

The  fundamental  error  of  modern  indus- 
trialism which  is  responsible,  according  to 
Hobson  in  his  "Democracy  after  War,"  for 
[  219  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

most  of  the  ills  of  society,  such  as  capitalism, 
landlordism,  militarism,  and  so  forth,  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  entire  effort  of  produc- 
tion is  motivated  by  the  demoralizing,  cor- 
roding influence  of  profit.  The  most  vital 
function  that  the  town-planner  can  have  to- 
day is  the  provision  of  that  technique  for  an 
industrial  community,  which,  while  it  must 
conform  to  the  necessary  economic  demands 
of  feasibility,  at  the  same  time  produces  the 
means  for  escape  from  the  demoralizing  in- 
fluence of  work  for  profit  and  further  pro- 
vides the  opportunity  of  exercising  man's 
creative  impulse  in  creative  achievement.  It 
needs  to  be  emphasized  that  profit  has  been 
the  creating  and  sustaining  motive  of  indus- 
trialism since  its  inception.  Examined  from 
an  ethical  point  of  view,  we  find  that  profit, 
at  least  as  a  primary  motive,  if  at  all,  can- 
not be  morally  supported;  for,  when  judged 
by  the  product  in  human  misery,  which  in- 
dustrialism so  motivated  has  superimposed 
upon  the  world  for  the  last  hundred  years, 
there  is  no  avoiding  its  indictment. 

The  proposed  means  of  escape  from  the 
slavery  of  our  industrial  system,  to  be  most 
successful,  will  involve  the  acceptance  and 
the  use  of  the  present  industrial  order,  as 
any  non-destructive  program  must  entail. 
[  220  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

In  brief,  the  proposal  is  made  that  each 
head  of  a  family  and  the  individual  worker 
be  provided  with  enough  garden  space  im- 
mediately contiguous  to  his  dwelling  to  en- 
able him  to  produce,  with  the  intelligent 
direction  and  the  cooperation  of  an  agricul- 
tural corps  of  community  workers,  the  larger 
part  of  vegetables  and  small  fruits  which  he 
and  his  family  consume  in  the  course  of  a 
year.  Two  farms  are  recommended,  one  a 
crop  farm  and  the  other  a  dairy  farm  which 
shall  be  community-owned  and  community- 
operated,  and  in  which  at  all  times  members 
of  the  community  will  find  opportunity  for 
compensable  employment,  such  compensa- 
tion taking  the  form  of  food-products  when- 
ever money  is  not  available  for  payment. 
In  both  the  private  and  the  community  gar- 
dens, children  of  the  town  will  get  one  phase 
of  their  education  while  at  the  same  time 
actually  producing  food  commodities  of 
value  with  which  they  may  supplement  the 
family  income. 

In  addition  to  these  means  of  livelihood, 
apart  from  that  of  work  in  the  adjacent  in- 
dustries, it  is  proposed  to  furnish  electric 
power  to  a  basement  workroom  of  every 
man's  home  wherein,  in  his  moments  of  free- 
dom, he  may  try  his  hand  at  producing  those 
[221  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

things  which  his  heart  and  mind  may  dictate, 
and  by  which,  in  due  season,  he  will  be  able 
to,  if  not  wholly,  partially  support  himself 
and  family.  Supplementary  provision  for 
experimental  efforts  in  self-support  in  the 
home  is  proposed  in  a  community-owned 
workshop,  which  shall  be  created  and 
equipped  with  power  and  tools.  Herein  the 
men  interested  in  the  same  kind  of  produc- 
tion will  naturally  congregate  for  mutual 
efforts  and  mutual  support. 

It  is  from  some  such  beginning  that  we 
might  reasonably  look  for  a  genuine  ren- 
aissance of  the  medieval  guild.  To  some, 
such  proposals  for  escaping  the  wage  slav- 
ery of  industrialism  and  for  re-creating  the 
guild  method  of  production  may  seem  fan- 
tastic and  impractical.  However,  there  are 
many  favorable  conditions  that  would  tend 
to  operate  to  such  ends;  for  instance,  inter- 
mittent employment,  excessively  arduous 
work,  or  the  disagreeable  or  dehumanizing 
character  of  tasks  which  are  likely  to  be  in- 
volved by  the  contiguous  industrial  plant. 
When  such  conditions  do  obtain,  the  most 
enterprising  and  resourceful  of  the  men  en- 
gaged in  such  work  would  surely  seek  self- 
support  along  the  lines  herein  indicated  and, 
in  most  cases,  would  succeed  and  therein 
[  222  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

find  the  satisfaction  which  comes  from  the 
expression  of  the  creative  impulse,  a  satis- 
faction that  needs  no  excess  compensation  in 
terms  of  money.  Initiated,  as  the  movement 
undoubtedly  would  be,  by  the  abler  leading 
spirits  of  the  community,  other  men  of  lesser 
ability  and  courage  would  be  attracted  from 
industry  operated  for  profit  to  one  or  an- 
other of  the  groups  which  produce  commodi- 
ties for  the  joy  of  self-expression  and  from 
which  their  livelihood  would  come  as  a  sec- 
ondary and  matter-of-course  result. 

It  is  our  faith,  then,  that  through  some 
such  provision  of  opportunities  for  indus- 
trial freedom  there  would  develop  a  rational, 
feasible,  logical  reincarnation  of  the  old 
guild  idea. 

Such  an  unprecedented  concept  of  indus- 
trial transformation  and  community  devel- 
opment would  certainly  fail  of  realization 
were  the  initial  steps  of  the  project  not 
guided  by  the  ablest  and  friendliest  of  hands. 
It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  causes  fail  time 
and  again  from  the  want  of  competent 
agents.  For  such  an  undertaking,  men  are 
needed  who,  by  the  quality  of  their  minds 
or  the  evangelical  fire  of  their  spirit,  pre- 
determine the  success  of  any  enterprise  to 
which  they  give  themselves.  It  is  such  a 
[  223  ] 


APPENDIX    D 

group  of  men  and  women  who  have  pro- 
jected the  graduate  school  of  social  and  po- 
litical science,  to  be  located  in  New  York 
City,  and  who  are  the  type  of  men  and 
women  who,  by  their  mental  equipment  and 
their  integrity  of  social  purpose,  would  in- 
sure the  fullest  realization  of  these  high  pur- 
poses. 

II.   THE  ECONOMIC  METHOD 

The  most  successful  medium  for  the  eco- 
nomical development  of  good  towns  that  has 
yet  been  made  use  of  is  the  copartnership 
plan.  For  nearly  fifty  years  it  has  been, 
with  some  slight  modifications  and  improve- 
ment, made  use  of  in  the  English  garden 
cities  and  villages,  and  it  has  accomplished 
those  things  which  the  program  of  this  prop- 
osition has  suggested  as  necessary  objec- 
tives. By  holding  all  the  land  of  the  vil- 
lage collectively,  and  by  leasing  instead  of 
selling,  no  opportunity  is  ever  provided  for 
speculation  in  land-value  increments. 

Charter  provisions  in  these  towns  provide 
for  a  limited  number  of  houses  per  acre, 
which  will  effectually  and  forever  prevent 
congestion  of  habitations.  This,  however, 
in  future  towns,  must  be  supplemented  by 
an  experimental  limitation  in  the  floating 
[  224  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

population  of  a  community,  the  limitation 
being  determined,  as  Socrates  has  suggested, 
according  to  Plato,  by  that  size  which  would 
produce  the  fullest  life  and  yet  have  the 
quality  of  unity.  Such  a  limitation  of  pop- 
ulation, while  it  might  have  some  disadvan- 
tages because  of  its  arbitrary  nature,  will 
have  many  more  advantages,  such  as,  for  in- 
stance, making  it  possible  to  provide  with 
finality  all  of  the  social  and  semi-social  pro- 
visions such  as  schools,  libraries,  music  halls, 
gymnasiums,  theatres,  markets,  and  the  like. 
With  the  knowledge  of  this  finality,  a  higher 
quality  and  more  permanent  character  of 
structure  could  be  provided  for  public  build- 
ings, public  parks,  and  play-spaces. 

Modifications  of  the  copartnership  plan 
have  been  suggested,  perhaps  as  wartime 
measures,  which  did  not  involve  having  the 
tenant  subscribe  to  tenant  shareholders' 
stock.  Such  an  alteration  of  this  plan  con- 
flicts with  one  of  its  most  important  social 
aspects,  to  wit,  the  making  of  all  tenants 
shareholding  partners  in  the  enterprise,  and 
cannot  advisedly  be  accepted  as  a  proper 
modification  of  the  copartnership  plan. 

When  this  method  of  organization  is 
made  use  of,  it  automatically  takes  care  of 
the  question  of  taxation  through  the  rent 
[  225  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

payment,  the  taxes  being  determined  by  the 
representatives  of  the  tenant  and  non-tenant 
shareholders. 

The  purpose  of  taxation,  however,  is  to 
assign  the  just  and  proportionate  share  of 
the  cost  of  collective  living,  and  while  this 
has  been  successfully  done  in  places  where 
land  is  not  sold  by  appraising  the  rental 
values  of  land,  this  method  is  not  ideal,  since 
excessive  rentals  tend  to  be  reimposed  upon 
the  people  of  a  community. 

An  alternate  form  of  taxation  which  it 
would  be  desirable  to  experiment  with  is  one 
that  would  be  based  upon  having  all  men, 
women,  and  children  in  a  community  give  a 
certain  percentage  of  their  entire  time  to 
community  work;  the  percentage  being  the 
same,  such  a  tax  would  be  equitable  and  also 
proportionate  for  himself.  Such  a  provis- 
ion would  have  the  effect  of  stimulating 
pride  in  and  love  for  one's  own  commu- 
nity, since  we  love  most  those  people  and 
those  things  which  we  serve  most.  It  may  be 
objected  that  the  community  might  need 
things  which  the  service  of  members  in  the 
community  could  not  provide.  This  would 
be  met  by  allowing  payment  in  amount  of 
the  equivalent  of  a  man's  time,  that  time 
for  which  he  was  taxed  by  the  community, 
[  226  ]" 


APPENDIX   D 

although  no  man  should  be  allowed  to  sub- 
stitute payment  for  the  entire  service  tax. 
By  such  a  provision  there  will  never  be  any 
question  of  increase  in  land-value  where  the 
co-partnership  plan  is  made  use  of  and 
where  a  broad  agricultural  and  wood- 
land belt  of  land  surrounds  a  community, 
so  as  not  to  give  any  increase  in  land-values 
to  the  contiguous  territory  —  a  provision, 
which,  as  a  matter  of  course,  should  be  made 
for  any  new  town. 

The  purpose  of  government  is  to  accom- 
plish the  fullest  functioning  of  the  group  as 
to  its  collective  material,  physical,  and  spir- 
itual needs,  and  to  provide  for  itself  every 
requisite  of  the  good  life  which  the  collective 
efforts  would  more  effectively  and  benefi- 
cially secure  than  would  individual  effort. 
The  form  of  government  which  would  prove 
most  democratic,  and  yet  at  the  same  time 
practical,  is  that  of  the  New  England  town 
with  its  town  meeting.  If  the  state  in  which 
the  community  exists  permits  this  form,  it 
should  be  made  use  of  in  the  beginning.  The 
ultimate  goal  as  to  form  of  government 
ought  to  be  that  which  was  characteristic 
of  the  Old  World  and  the  guild.  Govern- 
ment arose  out  of  a  group  of  men  function- 
ing similarly,  and  it  is  by  our  functions 
[  227  ]  ' 


APPENDIX   D 

rather  than  by  more  arbitrary  methods  of 
determining  political  groups  that  we  should 
determine  our  government.  The  heads  of 
guilds  meet  other  heads  of  guilds  in  the 
Guilds  Hall,  and  since  all  are  consumers  of 
each  others'  products,  as  well  as  producers 
of  their  own  products,  the  community's  best 
welfare  is  automatically  insured.  But  the 
entire  purpose  of  this  thesis  is  to  set  free 
men  so  that  their  natural  instincts  may  be 
allowed  to  autonomously  provide,  not  alone 
their  own  form  of  government  and  taxation, 
but  their  entire  social  and  industrial  life; 
therefore  little  importance  can  be  attached 
to  the  initiative  policies  since  they  will  be, 
in  such  a  community,  eliminated  or  de- 
veloped according  to  their  merit  and  fitness 
soon  after  their  inauguration. 

III.  THE  PHYSICAL  PLAN 

This  town  plan  has  been  designed  ac- 
cording to  the  ideals  set  forth  in  the  "Social 
Purpose,"  wherein  the  characteristics  and 
the  nature  of  man  have  been  set  down  as  the 
proper  guiding  fundamental  consideration. 
The  fact  that  a  man  is  a  physical  animal  is 
recognized  in  the  commonplace,  everyday 
provisions  of  the  everyday  town.  The  dis- 
position of  these  provisions  has  been  made 
[  228  ] 


APPENDIX  D 

in  a  more  unified  and  economic  way.  The 
position  of  the  shops,  markets,  banks,  thea- 
tres, apartments,  individual  and  multiple 
houses  recognize  and  provide  for  this  physi- 
cal nature  of  man. 

Provision  for  the  effort  to  satisfy  that  uni- 
versal character  of  normal  mental  process 
toward  integration  has  been  in  part  con- 
sidered in  the  design  of  the  town  by  the 
unity  of  its  street  system  and  by  the  fact 
that  each  block  of  the  town  is  made  a  unit 
in  itself  through  the  tying  effect  which  the 
community  set  of  buildings,  located  midway 
in  the  block,  provides,  The  unity  of  plan 
which  makes  for  integration  is  further  se- 
cured by  the  location  of  the  principal  shop- 
ping, social,  and  recreational  centers  on  one 
main  axis.  It  is  further  amplified  by  the 
centralization  of  these  functions  in  orderly 
and  logical  manner,  and  again  by  the  seg- 
regation of  the  manufacturing  area  from  the 
living  area,  all  of  which  tend  to  make  life 
in  this  community  an  orderly,  harmonious 
whole. 

The  provision  for  the  transaction  of  the 
creative  impulse  has  been  made  by  setting 
aside  land  and  site  for  groups  of  workshops 
in  which  the  guild  form  of  industry  may 
develop.  It  is  further  maintained  in  the  nu- 
[  229  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

merous  public  buildings,  planned  for  music, 
art,  theatricals,  and  all  manner  of  recrea- 
tional activities,  for  even  in  such  forms  the 
creative  impulse  finds  ways  of  self-expres- 
sion. The  aforementioned  considerations  of 
the  home  and  community  workshop  are  per- 
haps the  most  important  mediums  for  the 
satisfaction  of  this  instinct. 

The  provision  for  the  herd  or  social  in- 
stinct has  perhaps  been  the  most  extensive 
of  all,  not  only  because  it  is  such  an  impor- 
tant phase  of  mankind,  but  its  satisfaction 
is  expressed  more  largely  than  that  of  other 
instincts  in  the  material  terms  of  buildings, 
parks,  recreational  fields,  etc.,  and  these  are 
fully  enumerated  and  described  in  the  plan. 

The  provision  for  the  instinct  of  freedom 
is  most  potently  expressed  in  the  plan  that 
insures  a  choice  between  industrial  effort  for 
profit  and  industrial  effort  for  self-expres- 
sion. The  other  provisions  for  satisfying  the 
spirit  of  freedom  are  not  expressible  in  the 
plan. 

The  spirit  of  play  has  been  fully  met  by 
placing  at  hand,  contiguous  to  the  home, 
a  park  and  playgrounds  and  by  providing 
in  the  outskirts,  contiguous  to  the  larger 
schools  and  the  great  gymnasiums,  generous 
areas  for  recreation. 

[  230  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

The  love  of  the  beautiful  has  been  afforded 
satisfaction  in  the  home  itself  by  the  group- 
ing of  houses  and  the  open  spaces  surround- 
ing them,  the  parks  and  playgrounds  afford- 
ing splendid  opportunities  for  a  beautiful 
background  of  foliage  and  the  play  of 
shadow  and  sunshine.  The  buildings  in  the 
social  groups  are  so  placed  as  to  insure  pic- 
turesqueness  and  charm,  while,  in  the  busi- 
ness center,  the  charm  of  order  and  sym- 
metry is  provided  for. 

The  economic  requisites  which  feasibility 
demands  have  been  met  by  providing  a  min- 
imum of  street  area  for  a  maximum  of 
house-frontage  perimeter.  Streets  have 
been  minimized  by  focusing  through  traffic 
on  a  few  diagonal  streets  of  sufficient  di- 
mensions. Economy  in  pedestrian  and  ve- 
hicular traffic  has  been  insured  by  the  fo- 
cusing of  the  diagonals  and  horizontal  streets 
on  a  series  of  points  rather  than  upon  a 
single  point,  and  everywhere  provision  has 
been  made  for  one-way  traffic.  An  innova- 
tion, aiming  to  further  facilitate  the  move- 
ment of  traffic,  has  been  introduced  by  flar- 
ing these  diagonals  for  two  blocks,  up  to 
reaching  the  point  of  their  objectives.  This 
provision  means  easy  accommodations  for 
the  retardation  of  traffic  which  takes  place 
[  231  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

at  such  points  and  furthermore  makes  pro- 
vision for  the  increase  of  standing  traffic. 

By  way  of  facilitating  all  manner  of  ex- 
periment in  community  life,  a  group  of  com- 
munity buildings  has  been  provided  in  the 
center  of  each  block.  Herein  it  is  proposed 
that  the  nursery,  the  kindergarten,  and  the 
primary  schools  will  be  placed,  with  pro- 
vision for  experiment  in  community  laun- 
dry, sewing-room,  kitchen,  and  dining-room, 
also  for  reading-room,  small  library  and 
evening  school.  Herein  may  develop  the 
nucleus  which  will  make  democracy  a  real 
and  living  thing. 

In  this  thesis  we  have  considered  housing 
and  town-planning  as  of  far  greater  im- 
port when  used  as  a  means  to  a  new  social 
order  than  as  an  end  in  itself.  This  we  be- 
lieve to  be  a  fundamental  and  essential  atti- 
tude toward  the  problem  in  our  present-day 
generation  when  housing  has  such  potent 
promise  as  a  medium  to  the  new  order  and 
the  new  day. 

We  have  claimed  a  great  deal  for  the  re- 
generative power  of  our  housing  scheme. 
Beyond  all  debate,  some  such  undertaking 
is  indispensable  to  the  new  social  order,  yet 
it  would  be  contrary  to  our  fundamental 
[  232  ] 


APPENDIX   D 

principles  to  insist  upon  it  as  a  cure-all. 
True,  it  will  favor  and  support  every  rea- 
sonable reform  —  it  will,  of  its  own  excel- 
lence, repair  many  of  the  blind  cruelties  of 
an  uncontrolled  industrial  order  —  but  new 
and  sounder  methods  of  education,  a 
thoroughgoing  application  of  the  new  prin- 
ciples of  mental  hygiene,  a  strong  develop- 
ment of  the  non-militaristic  internation  and 
the  consequent  removal  of  pressure  that  sup- 
ports many  of  the  most  intolerable  features 
of  our  present  social  organization  —  these 
also  are  necessary,  independent,  and  sup- 
plemental. 


[  233  ] 


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